surrounding a favourite hill with stones, that the comedy might not
be turned into tragedy by a careless footfall. The cottage on the
river road grew more and more to resemble a museum and herbarium as
the years went by, and the Widow Croft's weekly house-cleaning was a
matter that called for the exercise of Christian grace.

Still, Tony was a good son, affectionate, considerate, and obedient.
His mother had no idea that he would ever be able, or indeed willing,
to make a living; but there was a forest of young timber growing up,
a small hay farm to depend upon, and a little hoard that would keep
him out of the poorhouse when she died and left him to his own
devices. It never occurred to her that he was in any way remarkable.
If he were difficult to understand, it reflected more upon his
eccentricity than upon her density. What was a woman to do with a
boy of twelve who, when she urged him to drop the old guitar he was
taking apart and hurry off to school, cried, "Oh, mother! when there
is so much to learn in this world, it is wicked, wicked, to waste
time in school."

About this period Tony spent hours in the attic arranging bottles and
tumblers into a musical scale. He also invented an instrument made
of small and great, long and short pins, driven into soft board to
different depths, and when the widow passed his door on the way to
bed she invariably saw this barbaric thing locked to the boy's
breast, for he often played himself to sleep with it.

At fifteen he had taken to pieces and put together again,
strengthened, soldered, mended, and braced, every accordion, guitar,
melodeon, dulcimer, and fiddle in Edgewood, Pleasant River, and the
neighbouring villages. There was a little money to be earned in this