carving-knife! That was a serious
offence. Arrest him, and send him to jail at the Forks? Take him out,
and duck him in the lake? Lick him, and drive him out of the town?

There was a multitude of counsellors, but it was Hose Ransom who settled
the case. He was a well-known fighting-man, and a respected philosopher.
He swung his broad frame in front of the fiddler.

"Tell ye what we'll do. Jess nothin'! Ain't Bull Corey the blowin'est
and the mos' trouble-us cuss 'round these hull woods? And would n't it
be a fust-rate thing ef some o' the wind was let out 'n him?"

General assent greeted this pointed inquiry.

"And wa'n't Fiddlin' Jack peacerble 'nough 's long 's he was let alone?
What's the matter with lettin' him alone now?"

The argument seemed to carry weight. Hose saw his advantage, and
clinched it.

"Ain't he given us a lot o' fun here this winter in a innercent kind o'
way, with his old fiddle? I guess there ain't nothin' on airth he loves
better 'n that holler piece o' wood, and the toons that's inside o' it.
It's jess like a wife or a child to him. Where's that fiddle, anyhow?"

Some one had picked it deftly out of Corey's hand during the scuffle,
and now passed it up to Hose.

"Here, Frenchy, take yer long-necked, pot-bellied music-gourd. And I
want you boys to understand, ef any one teches that fiddle ag'in, I'll
knock hell out 'n him."

So the recording angel dropped another tear upon the record of Hosea
Ransom, and the books were closed for the night.

III

For some weeks after the incident of the violin and the carving-knife,
it looked as if a permanent cloud had settled upon the spirits of
Fiddlin' Jack. He was sad and nervous; if any one touched him, or
even spoke to him suddenly, he would jump like a deer. He kept out of
everybody's way as much as possible, sat out in the wood-shed when he
was not at work, and could not be persuaded to bring down his fiddle. He
seemed in a fair way to be transformed into "the melancholy Jaques."

It was Serena who broke the spell; and she did it in a woman's way, the
simplest way in the world--by taking no notice of it.

"Ain't you goin' to play for me to-night?" she asked one evening,
as Jacques passed through the kitchen. Whereupon the evil spirit was
exorcised, and the violin came back again to its place in the life of
the house.

But there was less time for music now than there had been in the winter.
As the snow vanished from the woods, an