shy, and if he had
had beak and claw instead of clumsy fingers. He would sit near a beehive
for hours without moving, or lie prone in the sandy road, under the
full glare of the sun, watching the ants acting out their human comedy;
sometimes surrounding a favorite hill with stones, that the comedy might
not be turned into a tragedy by a careless footfall. The cottage on the
river road grew more and more to resemble a museum and herbarium as the
years went by, and the Widow Croft's weekly house-cleaning was a matter
that called for the exercise of Christian grace.

Still, Tony was a good son, affectionate, considerate, and obedient.
His mother had no idea that he would ever be able, or indeed willing,
to make a living; but there was a forest of young timber growing up, a
small hay farm to depend upon, and a little hoard that would keep him
out of the poorhouse when she died and left him to his own devices.
It never occurred to her that he was in any way remarkable. If he were
difficult to understand, it reflected more upon his eccentricity than
upon her density. What was a woman to do with a boy of twelve who, when
she urged him to drop the old guitar he was taking apart and hurry off
to school, cried, "Oh, mother! when there is so much to learn in this
world, it is wicked, wicked to waste time in school."

About this period Tony spent hours in the attic arranging bottles and
tumblers into a musical scale. He also invented an instrument made
of small and great, long and short pins, driven into soft board to
different depths, and when the widow passed his door on the way to bed
she invariable saw this barbaric thing locked up to the boy's breast,
for he often played himself to sleep with it.

At fifteen he had taken to pieces and put together again, strengthened,
soldered, tinkered, mended, and braced every accordion, guitar,
melodeon, dulcimer, and fiddle in Edgewood, Pleasant River, and the
neighboring villages. There was a little money to be earned in this way,
but very little, as people in general regarded this "tinkering" as a
pleasing diversion in which they could indulge him without danger. As
an example of this attitude, Dr. Berry's wife's melodeon had lost two
stops, the pedals had severed connection with the rest of the works,
it wheezed like an asthmatic, and two black keys were missing. Anthony
worked more than a week on its rehabilitation, and received in return
Mrs. Berry's promise that the doctor would pu