and Laurelia experienced a sense of
loss. "Some time, Lee-yander, ef ye war ter kem acrost that chune agin,
try ter set it in yer remembrance, an' play it whenst ye kem home," she
said, wistfully, at last, as if this errant melody were afloat somewhere
in the vague realms of sound, where one native to those haunts might
hope to encounter it anew.

"Yes, ma'am, cap'n, I will," he said, with his facile assent. But his
tone expressed slight intention, and his indifference bespoke a too
great wealth of "chunes"; he could feel no lack in some unremembered
combination, sport of the moment, when another strain would come at
will, as sweet perchance, and new.

She winced as from undeserved reproach when presently Leander's
proclivities for the society of the gay young blades about the
countryside, sometimes reputed "evil men," were attributed to this exile
of the violin from the hearth-stone. She roused herself to disputation,
to indignant repudiation.

"They talk ez ef it war _me_ ez led the drinkin', an' the gamin', an'
the dancing and sech, ez goes on in the Cove, 'kase whenst Lee-yander
war about fryin' size I wouldn't abide ter hev him a-sawin' away on the
fiddle in the house enough ter make me deef fur life. At fust the racket
of it even skeered Towse so he wouldn't come out from under the
house fur two days an' better; he jes sot under thar an' growled, an'
shivered, an' showed his teeth ef enny-body spoke ter him. Nobody don't
like Lee-yan-der's performin' better'n I do whenst he plays them saaft,
slippin'-away, slow medjures, ez sound plumb religious--ef 'twarn't a
sin ter say so. Naw, sir, ef ennybody hev sot Lee-yander on ter evil
ways 'twarn't me. My conscience be clear."

Nevertheless she was grievously ill at ease when one day there rode up
to the fence a tall, gaunt, ill-favored man, whose long, lean, sallow
countenance, of a Pharisaic cast, was vaguely familiar to her, as one
recognizes real lineaments in the contortions of a caricature or the
bewilderments of a dream. She felt as if in some long-previous existence
she had seen this man as he dismounted at the gate and came up the path
with his saddle-bags over his arm. But it was not until he mustered an
unready, unwilling smile, that had of good-will and geniality so slight
an intimation that it was like a spasmodic grimace, did she perceive how
time had deepened tendencies to traits, how the inmost thought and the
secret sentiment had been chiselled into