ound up, with immense hilarity,
the company ran out to the side door of the tavern to shout a noisy
farewell to the bridal buggy, as it drove down the road toward the house
with the white palings. When they came back, the fiddler was gone. He
had slipped away to the little cabin with the curved roof.

All night long he sat there playing in the dark. Every tune that he had
ever known came back to him--grave and merry, light and sad. He played
them over and over again, passing round and round among them as a leaf
on a stream follows the eddies, now backward, now forward, and returning
most frequently to an echo of a certain theme from Chopin--you remember
the NOCTURNE IN G MINOR, the second one? He did not know who Chopin
was. Perhaps he did not even know the name of the music. But the air had
fallen upon his ear somewhere, and had stayed in his memory; and now it
seemed to say something to him that had an especial meaning.

At last he let the bow fall. He patted the brown wood of the violin
after his old fashion, loosened the strings a little, wrapped it in its
green baize cover, and hung it on the wall.

"Hang thou there, thou little violin," he murmured. "It is now that I
shall take the good care of thee, as never before; for thou art the wife
of Jacques Tremblay. And the wife of 'Osee Ransom, she is a friend to
us, both of us; and we will make the music for her many years, I
tell thee, many years--for her, and for her good man, and for the
children--yes?"

But Serena did not have many years to listen to the playing of
Jacques Tremblay: on the white porch, in the summer evenings, with
bleeding-hearts abloom in the garden; or by the winter fire, while the
pale blue moonlight lay on the snow without, and the yellow lamplight
filled the room with homely radiance. In the fourth year after her
marriage she died, and Jacques stood beside Hose at the funeral.

There was a child--a little boy--delicate and blue-eyed, the living
image of his mother. Jacques appointed himself general attendant, nurse
in extraordinary, and court musician to this child. He gave up his work
as a guide. It took him too much away from home. He was tired of it.
Besides, what did he want of so much money? He had his house. He could
gain enough for all his needs by making snow-shoes and the deerskin
mittens at home. Then he could be near little Billy. It was pleasanter
so.

When Hose was away on a long trip in the woods, Jacques would move up
to