sted Orpheus, his body, which was
convulsively in motion, forming an odd contrast to his somnolent,
imperturbable Scots face. His brother, a dark man with a vehement,
interested countenance, who made a god of the fiddler, sat by with open
mouth, drinking in the general admiration and throwing out remarks to
kindle it.

"That's a bonny hornpipe now," he would say; "it's a great favourite
with performers; they dance the sand dance to it." And he expounded the
sand dance. Then suddenly, it would be a long "Hush!" with uplifted
finger and glowing, supplicating eyes; "he's going to play 'Auld Robin
Gray' on one string!" And throughout this excruciating movement,--"On
one string, that's on one string!" he kept crying. I would have given
something myself that it had been on none; but the hearers were much
awed. I called for a tune or two, and thus introduced myself to the
notice of the brother, who directed his talk to me for some little
while, keeping, I need hardly mention, true to his topic, like the
seamen to the star. "He's grand of it," he said confidentially. "His
master was a music-hall man." Indeed, the music-hall man had left his
mark, for our fiddler was ignorant of many of our best old airs; "Logie
o' Buchan," for instance, he only knew as a quick, jigging figure in a
set of quadrilles, and had never heard it called by name. Perhaps, after
all, the brother was the more interesting performer of the two. I have
spoken with him afterwards repeatedly, and found him always the same
quick, fiery bit of a man, not without brains; but he never showed to
such advantage as when he was thus squiring the fiddler into public
note. There is nothing more becoming than a genuine admiration; and it
shares this with love, that it does not become contemptible although
misplaced.

The dancing was but feebly carried on. The space was almost
impracticably small; and the Irish wenches combined the extreme of
bashfulness about this innocent display with a surprising impudence and
roughness of address. Most often, either the fiddle lifted up its voice
unheeded, or only a couple of lads would be footing it and snapping
fingers on the landing. And such was the eagerness of the brother to
display all the acquirements of his idol, and such the sleepy
indifference of the performer, that the tune would as often as not be
changed, and the hornpipe expire into a ballad before the dancers had
cut half a dozen shuffles.

In the meantime, however