During the intervening space, he employed himself in running errands and gathering sixpences, till he had amassed a sum sufficient for the purchase of strings, which, in his search through the mechanism of the instrument, he had found requisite. One sunset he returned with them in his pocket, carefully secreted among peg-top, white ally, whittlings and ginger-bread, and great was his joy when the thin crescent of the new moon lay above a long orange cloud, but equally great his sorrow to see the slender boat float down the lucid currents of the west, and leave no sign. A few nights more, however, and she was again his leaguer, fortified and reïnforced by certain candles pillaged from his mother's scanty store. Meanwhile he had lost no time for ingratiating himself with the church organist, had not suffered a day to pass without seeing him, had beset him with flocks of questions, had received hints and instructions that seemed to him as comprehensive as a library, and had, as he soon found, acquired, in this interval of rest, real knowledge and satisfactory progress.
The June passed into the harvest moon, October began to array herself in all the beautiful decadence of the year, and still his new pleasure had not palled upon Fauntleroy. He had repaired to the best of his ability the injuries time had wrought on this mine of enjoyment, had tuned it according to his inventive skill, and, when in the latter business strength failed, had resorted to a thousand expedients, had contrived infantile levers and screws, and, at one time, had even secured the refractory subject by a cord to the jambs across the room, thinking that being thoroughly wetted it would contract, as he had seen his mother's clothes-line do, and draw the tone to the required pitch. And although I doubt if by these methods he effected much, still he met with a certain success that sufficed, and they were excellent schemes of instruction. Remembering as he did, every line and mark of his one-paged volume of Beethoven, he had compared with it what every hour over the instrument taught him, and having obtained a book of tunes from the organ-desk at church, together with much more assistance from the friend there, had found his knowledge to be perfectly accurate if small, and that from these notes he could produce, though in how much less degree! the same melodies that enraptured him on Sabbaths. Moreover, so much attained, he now by practice became to a great extent master of difficulties to which most pupils yield, and of a convenient if not always elegant style, in which his little fingers would twinkle over the keys at some prestissimo, or slowly oar along through what seemed to him a sea of solemn harmony.