and the "hunter's
moon." Presently the musician came into view, advancing slowly through
the aisles of the red autumn forest. A rapt figure it was, swaying in
responsive ecstasy with the rhythmic cadence. The head, with its long,
blowsy yellow hair, was bowed over the dark polished wood of the
instrument; the eyes were half closed; the right arm, despite the
eccentric patches on the sleeve of the old brown-jeans coat, moved with
free, elastic gestures in all the liberties of a practiced bowing. If he
saw the hunter motionless on the brink of the crag, the fiddler gave no
intimation. His every faculty was as if enthralled by the swinging
iteration of the sweet melancholy melody, rendered with a breadth of
effect, an inspiration, it might almost have seemed, incongruous with
the infirmities of the crazy old fiddle. He was like a creature under
the sway of a spell, and apparently drawn by this dulcet lure of the
enchantment of sound was the odd procession that trailed silently after
him through these deep mountain fastnesses.

A woman came first, arrayed in a ragged purple skirt and a yellow blouse
open at the throat, displaying a slender white neck which upheld a face
of pensive, inert beauty. She clasped in her arms a delicate infant,
ethereal of aspect with its flaxen hair, transparently pallid
complexion, and wide blue eyes. It was absolutely quiescent, save that
now and then it turned feebly in its waxen hands a little striped
red-and-yellow pomegranate. A sturdy blond toddler trudged behind, in a
checked blue cotton frock, short enough to disclose cherubic pink feet
and legs bare to the knee; he carried that treasure of rural juveniles,
a cornstalk violin. An old hound, his tail suavely wagging, padded along
the narrow path; and last of all came, with frequent pause to crop the
wayside herbage, a large cow, brindled red and white.

"The whole fambly!" muttered Kennedy. Then, aloud, "Why don't you uns
kerry the baby, Basil Bedell, an' give yer wife a rest?"

At the prosaic suggestion the crystal realm of dreams was shattered. The
bow, with a quavering discordant scrape upon the strings, paused. Then
Bedell slowly mastered the meaning of the interruption.

"Kerry the baby? Why, Aurely won't let none but herself tech that baby."
He laughed as he tossed the tousled yellow hair from his face, and
looked over his shoulder to speak to the infant. "It air sech a plumb
special delightsome peach, it air,--it air!"

The pa