sought no longer feebly to hide themselves, but held the package that he
carried in fond authority of gesture, as a proud mother, whose pride had
banished bashfulness, might carry a beautiful child. So the Lad went
toward the dais, and, seating himself in the chair, proceeded with
deliberate tenderness to uncover the instrument.

An old, dark-looking one it was. The gloom of centuries darkened it.
Their dusk had penetrated the very fibre of the wood. Its look suggested
ancient times; far climes; and hands long mouldering in dust. It was an
instrument to quicken curiosity and elicit mental interrogation. What
was its story? Where was it made? By whom, and when? The Lad did not
know. It was his mother's gift, he said. And an old sea-captain had
given it to his mother. The old sea-captain had found it on a wreck in
the far-off Indian Ocean. He found it in a trunk--a great sea chest made
of scented wood and banded with brazen ribs. And in the chest, with it,
it was rumored the old mariner had found silks, and costly fabrics, and
gold, and eastern gems,--gems that never had been cut, but lay in all
their barbaric beauty, dull and swarth as Cleopatra's face. Thus the
violin had been found on the far seas--at the end of the world, as it
were, and in companionship of gems and fabrics rich and rare; and in a
chest whose mouth breathed odors. This was all the Lad knew.

"Henry," said the old Trapper, "the Lad says the fiddle is so old that
no one knows how old it is; and I conceit the boy speaks the truth. It
sartinly looks as old as a squaw whose teeth has dropped out and whose
face is the color of tanned buckskin. I tell ye, Henry, I believe it
will bust if the Lad draws the bow with any 'arnestness across it, for
there never was a glue made that would hold wood together for a thousand
year. And if that fiddle isn't a thousand year old, then John Norton is
no jedge of appearances, and can't count the prongs on the horns of a