ished.

"Peppers," he snapped, "you clatter like a feed-cutter. What are you
tryin' to say? Out with it. Let's hear it."

It was a bold effort to throw us off the scent. Peppers saw the lead,
and for a moment he was sober.

"I was a-warnin' the lost sinner," he said, "like Jonah warned the
sinners in Nineveh. I'm exhortin' him about the fall. Adam fell in the
Garden of Eden." Then the leer came back into his face. "Ever hear of
the Garden of Eden, Lemuel?"

"Yes," said Marks, glad to divert the dangerous drunkard.

"You ought," said Peppers. "Your grandpap was there, eatin' dirt an'
crawlin' on his belly."

We roared, and while the tavern was still shaking with it, Roy came in
carrying an old and badly battered fiddle under his arm. "Boys," he said
timidly, "furse all you want to, but don't start nothin'." Then he gave
the fiddle to Peppers, and came over to where we were seated. "Quiller,"
he said, "I reckon you all want a bite o' dinner."

I answered that we did. "Well," he apologised, "we didn't have your name
in the pot, but we'll dish you up something, an' you can give it a lick
an' a promise." Then he gathered up some empty dishes from a table and
went out.

Peppers was thumping the fiddle strings with his thumb, and screwing up
the keys. His sense of melody was in a mood to overlook many a defect,
and he presently thrust the fiddle under his chin and began to saw it.
Then he led off with a bellow,

"Come all ye merry maidens an' listen unto me."

But the old fiddle was unaccustomed to so vigorous a virtuoso, and its
bridge fell with a bang. The Parson blurted an expletive, inflected like
the profane. Then he straightened the bridge, gave the fiddle a
tremendous saw, and resumed his bellow. But with the accident, his first
tune had gone glimmering, and he dropped to another with the agility of
an acrobat.

"In eighteen hundred an' sixty-five
I thought I was quite lucky to find myself alive.
I saddled up old Bald Face my business to pursue,
An' I went to drivin' steers as I used for to do."

The fiddle was wofully out of tune, and it rasped and screeched and
limped like a spavined colt, but the voice of Peppers went ahead with
the bellow.

"But the stillhouse bein' close an' the licker bein' free
I took to the licker, an' the licker took to me.
I took to the licker, till I reeled an' I fell,
An' the whole cussed drove went a-trailin' off to hell."

Ump arose a