He did not directly answer me. Placing the fiddle very carefully upon the table, he stood for a moment in apparent agitation.
"Uncle, there is some mystery. Don't laugh at me!" I daresay I was smiling. "Something has happened to Coursault."
"From the character you have given the man the thing is very possible, and still there may be no mystery."
"Some time ago Coursault wrote the words of a little song, which he set to music The thing was in commemoration of certain pleasant days which he and I had spent together. I am nearly certain that no one ever heard of its existence except we two. He called it 'Where the Willows cast their Shade.' It is that which we have just heard played."
"‘Where the Willows cast their Shade'—rather a curious title for a song; but, even in titles, curiosities seem to be the mode. Are you sure it was the same?"
"Am I sure! It was the quaintest thing—like all he wrote, even the merest trifles, peculiarly characteristic. Is it not strange that I should hear Coursault's song, whose very existence was known only to him and to me, played on Coursault's violin?"
I stared.
"Do you mean to say that the man has been in this room, and at our approach, to use your own phrase, vanished into air?"
Ernest became preternaturally grave; he is the funniest lad.
"Uncle, strange things have happened."
"They have. As witness my being disturbed in
