I. A LOVER OF MUSIC
I
He entered the backwoods village of Bytown literally on the wings of the
wind. It whirled him along like a big snowflake, and dropped him at the
door of Moody's "Sportsmen's Retreat," as if he were a New Year's gift
from the North Pole. His coming seemed a mere chance; but perhaps there
was something more in it, after all. At all events, you shall hear, if
you will, the time and the manner of his arrival.
It was the last night of December, some thirty-five years ago. All the
city sportsmen who had hunted the deer under Bill Moody's direction had
long since retreated to their homes, leaving the little settlement
on the border of the Adirondack wilderness wholly under the social
direction of the natives.
The annual ball was in full swing in the dining-room of the hotel. At
one side of the room the tables and chairs were piled up, with their
legs projecting in the air like a thicket of very dead trees.
The huge stove in the southeast corner was blushing a rosy red through
its thin coat of whitewash, and exhaling a furious dry heat flavoured
with the smell of baked iron. At the north end, however, winter reigned;
and there were tiny ridges of fine snow on the floor, sifted in by the
wind through the cracks in the window-frames.
But the bouncing girls and the heavy-footed guides and lumbermen who
filled the ball-room did not appear to mind the heat or the cold. They
balanced and "sashayed" from the tropics to the arctic circle. They
swung at corners and made "ladies' change" all through the temperate
zone. They stamped their feet and did double-shuffles until the floor
trembled beneath them. The tin lamp-reflectors on the walls rattled like
castanets.
There was only one drawback to the hilarity of the occasion. The
band, which was usually imported from Sandy River Forks for such
festivities,--a fiddle, a cornet, a flute, and an accordion,--had not
arrived. There was a general idea that the mail-sleigh, in which the
musicians were to travel, had been delayed by the storm, and might
break its way through the snow-drifts and arrive at any moment. But Bill
Moody, who was naturally of a pessimistic temperament, had offered a
different explanation.
"I tell ye, old Baker's got that blame' band down to his hotel at
the Falls now, makin' 'em play fer his party. Them music fellers is
onsartin; can't trust 'em to keep anythin' 'cept the toon, and they
don't alluz keep that. Guess we
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