derable
warmth.

"_I_ would, certainly," reiterated the automatic Lovell "I'd show him his
place, you know; _I_ would certainly."

The big veins swollen out in George Giver's forehead knitted themselves
there for an instant sternly.

"I don't interfere with no man's business," said he. "So long as he means
honorable, and car'ies out his actions fa'r and squar', I don't begrudge
him his chance nor meddle in his affa'rs."

Our attention was suddenly diverted from this subject, which was
evidently growing to be a painful one to one of the company, by the sound
of a violin played with, singular skill and correctness just outside the
window.

"Glory, there's Lute!" exclaimed Harvey, bounding ecstatically from his
chair.

"Come in, Lute, come in?" he shouted; "and show us what can be got out of
a fiddle!"

"Let him alone," said George Olver, but the group had already vanished
through the door, Lovell following mechanically.

"That's Lute Cradlebow fiddlin' out thar'," George Olver explained to me.
"I don't want 'em to skeer him off, for it ain't every night Lute takes
kindly to his fiddle. There's times he won't touch it for days and days.
Talkin' about Lute's fiddlin'--I suppose it's true--there was some
fellows out from Boston happened to hear him playin' one night, up to
Sandwich te-own, and they offered him a hundred and fifty a month--I
Reckon that's true--to go along with some fiddlin' company thar' to
Boston, and he'd got more if he'd stuck to it, but Lute, he come driftin'
back in the course of a week or two. I don't blame him. He said he was
sick on't.

"I tell you how 'tis, teacher. Folks that lives along this shore are
allus talkin' more'n any other sort of folks about going off, and
complainin' about the hard livin', and cussin' the stingy sile, but
thar's suthin' about it sorter holts to 'em. They allus come a driftin'
back in some shape or other, in the course of a year or two at the
farderest."

The door was thrown wide open and my recreant guests reappeared
half-dragging, half-pushing before them a matchless Adonis in glazed
tarpaulin trousers and a coarse sailor's blouse.

I recognized at once in the perfect physical beauty of the eccentric
fiddler only a reproduction, in a larger form, of that sadly depraved
young cherub who had danced before me in ghostly habiliments on the way
to school. It was the imp's older brother.

"Here's Lute, teacher!" cried Harvey; "he wouldn't come in 'cause he