quieter tunes--ballads and songs that he knew Serena liked. After
supper came the final reel; and when that was wound up, with immense
hilarity, the company ran out to the side door of the tavern to
shout a noisy farewell to the bridal buggy, as it drove down the
road toward the house with the white palings. When they came back,
the fiddler was gone. He had slipped away to the little cabin with
the curved roof.

All night long he sat there playing in the dark. Every tune that he
had ever known came back to him--grave and merry, light and sad. He
played them over and over again, passing round and round among them
as a leaf on a stream follows the eddies, now backward, now forward,
and returning most frequently to an echo of a certain theme from
Chopin--you remember the NOCTURNE IN G MINOR, the second one? He
did not know who Chopin was. Perhaps he did not even know the name
of the music. But the air had fallen upon his ear somewhere, and
had stayed in his memory; and now it seemed to say something to him
that had an especial meaning.

At last he let the bow fall. He patted the brown wood of the violin
after his old fashion, loosened the strings a little, wrapped it in
its green baize cover, and hung it on the wall.

"Hang thou there, thou little violin," he murmured. "It is now that
I shall take the good care of thee, as never before; for thou art
the wife of Jacques Tremblay. And the wife of 'Osee Ransom, she is
a friend to us, both of us; and we will make the music for her many
years, I tell thee, many years--for her, and for her good man, and
for the children--yes?"