e fiddle while you dance; you may be sure I'll
fiddle my best for you."

A tender note came into his voice, and, curiously enough, Madelon did
not resent it, although she had never seen him before and he had no
right. She looked up in his bright fair face with sudden hesitation,
and his blue eyes bent half humorously, half lovingly upon her. She
had a fierce desire to get away from this place, out into the night,
and home. "I do not care to dance," said she, falteringly; "but I
could go home, if you felt disposed to fiddle."

"Then go home and rest," cried the stranger, brightly. "'Tis a strain
on the throat to lilt so long, and you cannot put in a new string as
you can in a fiddle."

With that the young man came forward to the front of the little
gallery, and Madelon yielded up her place hesitatingly.

"But you cannot dance yourself, sir," said she.

"I have danced all I want to to-night," he replied, and began tuning
the fiddle.

"I'm sure I'm much obliged to you, sir," Madelon said, and got her
hood and cloak from the back of the gallery with no more parley.

The young man cast admiring glances after her as she went out, with
her young brother at her heels.

"I'm going home with you," Richard said to her as they went down the
gallery stairs.

"Not a step," said she. "You've just been after the fiddle, and
they're going to dance the Fisher's Hornpipe next."

"You'll be afraid in that lonesome stretch after you leave the
village."

"Afraid!" There was a ring of despairing scorn in the girl's voice,
as if she faced already such woe that the supposition of new terror
was an absurdity.

They had come down to the ball-room floor, and were standing directly
in front of the musicians' gallery. The young fiddler, Jim Otis,
leaned over and looked at them.

"I don't care," said Richard, "I won't let you go alone unless you
take my knife."

Madelon laughed. "What nonsense!" said she, and tried to pass her
brother.

But Richard held her by the arm while he rummaged in his pocket for
the great clasp-knife which he had earned himself by the sale of some
rabbit-skins, and which was the pride of his heart and his dearest
treasure, and opened it. "Here," said he, and he forced the
clasp-knife into his sister's hand. Otis, leaning over the gallery,
saw it all. Many of the dancers had gone to supper; there was no
other person very near them. "If you should meet a _bear_, you could
kill him with that knife--it's so