against all the pleasant things of this world, and he can laugh,
and talk, and sing, like other people. Many's the time he's asked
me, of his own mouth, to play the violin; and I've seen his little
eyes caper again, when sweet Sall talked out her funniest. If it
was not so late, I'd go over now and give him a reel or two, and
then I could take a look at this strange chap, that's set your
grinders against each other."

The fiddler looked earnestly at the instrument in the corner, his
features plainly denoting his anxiety to resume the occupation
which his friends coming had so inopportunely interrupted. William
Hinkley saw the looks of his cousin, and divined the cause.

"You shall play for me, Ned," he remarked; "you shall give me that
old highland-reel that you learned from Scotch Geordie. It will
put me out of my bad humor, I think, and we can go to bed quietly.
I've come to sleep with you to-night."

"You're a good fellow, Bill; I knew that you couldn't stand it
long, if Sweet Sall kept a still tongue in her head. That reel's
the very thing to drive away bad humors, though there's another
that I learnt from John Blodget, the boat-man, that sounds to me
the merriest and comicalest thing in the world. It goes--," and here
the fiddle was put in requisition to produce the required sounds:
and having got carte blanche, our enthusiastic performer, without
weariness, went through his whole collection, without once perceiving
that his comical and merry tunes had entirely failed to change the
grave, and even gloomy expression which still mantled the face of
his companion. It was only when in his exhaustion he set down the
instrument, that he became conscious of William Hinkley's continued