quent anger. "Tells me, 'Yes, ma'am, cap'n,'
an' 'Naw, ma'am, cap'n,' jes ter quiet me--like folks useter do ter old
Ed'ard Green, ez war in his dotage--an' then goes along an' does the
very thing I tell him not ter do."

Sudley looked up as he sat smoking his pipe by the fire, a shade of
constraint in his manner, and a contraction of anxiety in his slow, dark
eyes, never quite absent when she spoke to him aside of Leander.

She paused, setting her gaunt arms akimbo, and wearing the manner of
one whose kindly patience is beyond limit abused. "Kems in hyar, he do,
a'totin' a fiddle. An' I says, 'Lee-yander Yerby, don't ye know that
thar thing's the devil's snare?' 'N'aw, ma'am, cap'n,' he says, grinnin'
like a imp; 'it's _my_ snare, fur I hev bought it from Peter Teazely
fur two rabbits what I cotch in my trap, an' my big red rooster, an' a
bag o' seed pop-corn, an' the only hat I hev got in the worl'. An' with
that the consarn gin sech a yawp, it plumb went through my haid, An'
then the critter jes tuk ter a-bowin' it back an' forth, a-playin' 'The
Chicken in the Bread-trough' like demented, a-dancin' off on fust one
foot an' then on t'other till the puncheons shuck. An' I druv him out
the house. I won't stan' none o' Satan's devices hyar! I tole him he
couldn't fetch that fiddle hyar whenst he kems home ter-night, an' I be
a-goin' ter make him a sun-bonnet or a nightcap ter wear stiddier his
hat that he traded off."

She paused.

Her husband had risen, the glow of his pipe fading in his unheeding
hand, his excited eyes fixed upon her. "Laurely," he exclaimed, "ye
ain't meanin' ez that thar leetle critter could play a chune fust off on
a fiddle 'thout no larnin'!"

She nodded her head in reluctant admission.

He opened his mouth once or twice, emitting no sound. She saw how
his elation, his spirit of commendation, his pride, set at naught her
displeasure, albeit in self-defence, perchance, he dared not say a
word. With an eye alight and an absorbed face, he laid his pipe on the
mantel-piece, and silently took his way out of the house in search of
the youthful musician.

Easily found! The racked and tortured echoes were all aquake within
half a mile of the spot where, bareheaded, heedless of the threatened
ignominy alike of sun-bonnet or nightcap, Leander sat in the flickering
sunshine and shadow upon a rock beside the spring, and blissfully
experimented with all the capacities of catgut to produce sound.

"Lis