for the
melody. Ewing caught a transient strain of it and thrilled to recognize
Ben's favorite, a thing he might be singing to his guitar in the far-off
lonely cabin at that very moment.

"'The Fatal Wedding,'" he ventured to the performer.

"Sure--that's it! 'The Fatal Wedding.' Wish you fellows could have heard
it--rich! How did it go, now?"

Ewing recklessly hummed the opening bars.

"Go ahead, if you know it!" This came from several of the men. He
protested. He would have liked to sing it, yet feared to do so before an
audience whose ridicule he had learned to dread. He considered the song
to be irreproachable and could understand the apparent enthusiasm about
it, but he doubted his worth as a vocalist.

"I don't believe I'd better try it," he began; "I know the words--it's
the favorite song of an old-time cowboy I've lived with, and he does it
right. I couldn't give anything more than a poor imitation of him."

The inciting calls were renewed.

"Go on! Do your worst! Show us how your friend does it! Silence in the
back of the hall!"

Piersoll smiled encouragingly and the accompanist struck the opening
chords, having at last recalled the air. Ewing diffidently took his
place at the end of the piano, with apologetic protests. "I'll do my
best, but you should hear Ben Crider sing this."

The little audience listened with unfeigned delight as he sang of the
handsome stranger who wooed the village beauty, only to desert her for
"a lady proud and haughty" who had "houses, jewels, land, and gold at
her command." The words moved his hearers. Had he not promised them to
render the song in his friend's manner? They felt he was achieving this
with rare art. Almost unconsciously, indeed, he sang the song in Ben's
best manner, with a sob in the voice and even with Ben's strained, sad
face as he reached the pitiful climax:

"While they were honeymooning in a mansion on the hill,
Kind friends were laying Nellie out behind the mill."

He moved quickly back to his chair almost before the first shouts of
laughter dismayed him. He blushed and glanced appealingly from face to
face as the applause was swelled by the groups in the rear room. He and
Ben had considered this no song to be laughed at. It was too sad. Yet he
saw that the applause was a friendly tribute to his performance.
Piersoll was pounding him joyously between the shoulders and Chalmers
was urging him to do Ben Crider singing the "Fatal Wedding" at