ng accursed. I
thought it no sin to keep his mind at peace, and clear of this thing,
for a cloud was gathering over him, my poor father. I told Abby,
however, good Abby Rock; and though it shocked her at first, she was
soon convinced that I brought home good instead of harm from my talks
with Father L'Homme-Dieu. She it was who begged me not to tell my
father, and she knew him better than any one else did, now that my
mother Marie was gone. She told me, too, of the danger that hung over my
poor father. The dark moods, since my mother's death, came over him more
and more often; it seemed, when he was in one of them, that his mind was
not itself. He never slighted his work,--that was like the breath he
drew,--but when it was done, he would sit for hours brooding by the
fireplace, looking at the little empty chair where my mother used to sit
and sing at her sewing. And sitting so and brooding, now and again there
would come over him as it were a blindness, and a forgetting of all
about him, so that when he came out of it he would cry out, asking where
he was, and what had been done to him. He would forget, too, that my
mother was gone, and would call her, "Mary! Mary!" so that one's heart
ached to hear him; and then Abby or I must make it clear to him again,
and see the dumb suffering of him, like a creature that had not the
power of speech, and knew nothing but pain and remembrance.

I might have been seventeen or eighteen at this time; I do not recall
the precise year. I was doing well with my shoemaking, and when this
trouble grew on my poor father I brought my bench into the kitchen, so
that I might have him always in sight. This was well enough for every
day, but already I was beginning to be sent for here and there, among
the neighbouring villages, to play the fiddle. The people of my father's
kind were passing away, those who thought music a device of the devil,
and believed that dancing feet were treading the road to hell. He was
still a power in our own village; but in the country round about the
young folks were learning the use of their feet, and none could hinder
them, being the course of nature, since young lambs first skipped in the
meadows. It was an old farmer, a good, jolly kind of man, who first gave
me the name of "Rosin." He sent for me to play at his barn-raising, and
a pretty sight it was; a fine new barn, Melody, all smelling sweet of
fresh wood, and hung with lanterns, and a vast quantity of fruits a