When they returned to the front of the house the black-eyed girl
kissed the young man, closing her eyes and thinking of McGregor. In
her room later she lay abed dreaming. She imagined herself assaulted
by the young man who had crept into her room and that McGregor had
come roaring down the hall to snatch him away and fling him outside
the door.
At the end of the hallway near the stairway leading to the street
lived a barber. He had deserted a wife and four children in a town in
Ohio and to prevent recognition had grown a black beard. Between this
man and McGregor a companionship had sprung up and they went together
on Sunday mornings to walk in the park. The black bearded man called
himself Frank Turner.
Frank Turner had a passion. Through the evenings and on Sunday
afternoons he sat in his room making violins. He worked with a knife,
glue, pieces of glass and sand paper and spent his earnings for
ingredients for the making of varnishes. When he got hold of a piece
of wood that seemed an answer to his prayers he took it to McGregor's
room and holding it up to the light talked of what he would do with
it. Sometimes he brought a violin and sitting in the open window
tested the quality of its tone. One evening he took an hour of
McGregor's time to talk of the varnish of Cremona and to read to him
from a worn little book concerning the old Italian masters of violin
making.
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