ght.

"Well, I'll take it."

We took the vial aboard and went on; but the incident powerfully
affected us. The weird voice of the old woman was exciting in itself,
and we could not escape the image of this unknown man, dancing about
this region without any medicine, fleeing perchance by night and alone,
and finally flitting away down the Gut of Canso. This fugitive mystery
almost immediately shaped itself into the following simple poem:

"There was an old man of Canso,
Unable to sit or stan' so.
When I asked him why he ran so,
Says he, 'I've St. Vitus' dance so,
All down the Gut of Canso.'"

This melancholy song is now, I doubt not, sung by the maidens of
Antigonish.

In spite of the consolations of poetry, however, the night wore on
slowly, and soothing sleep tried in vain to get a lodgment in the
jolting wagon. One can sleep upright, but not when his head is every
moment knocked against the framework of a wagon-cover. Even a jolly
young Irishman of Plaster Cove, whose nature it is to sleep under
whatever discouragement, is beaten by these circumstances. He wishes he
had his fiddle along. We never know what men are on casual acquaintance.
This rather stupid-looking fellow is a devotee of music, and knows how
to coax the sweetness out of the unwilling violin. Sometimes he goes
miles and miles on winter nights to draw the seductive bow for the Cape
Breton dancers, and there is enthusiasm in his voice, as he relates
exploits of fiddling from sunset till the dawn of day. Other
information, however, the young man has not; and when this is exhausted,
he becomes sleepy again, and tries a dozen ways to twist himself into
a posture in which sleep will be possible. He doubles up his legs, he
slides them under the seat, he sits on the wagon bottom; but the
wagon swings and jolts and knocks him about. His patience under
this punishment is admirable, and there is something pathetic in his
restraint from profanity.

It is enough to look out upon the magnificent night; the moon is now
high, and swinging clear and distant; the air has grown chilly; the
stars cannot be eclipsed by the greater light, but glow with a chastened
fervor. It is on the whole a splendid display for the sake of four
sleepy men, banging along in a coach,--an insignificant little vehicle
with two horses. No one is up at any of the farmhouses to see it; no one
appears to take any interest in it, except an occasional baying dog, or