For an instant Jethro was confused. When he entered the shop he had not
made up his mind what he should do. It had been mere impulse and the
fever of his brain. As old Berry spoke, however, his course opened out.

"I heard. I am a stranger. My fiddle is not here. My fingers itch for
the cat-gut. Eh?"

The look in old Berry's face softened a little. His instinct had been
against his visitor, and he had been prepared to send him to another
shop-besides, not every day could he talk to the greatest man in the
West.

"If you can play, there it is," he said after a slight pause, and handed
the fiddle over.

It was true that Jethro Fawe loved the fiddle. He had played it in many
lands. Twice, in order to get inside the palace of a monarch for a
purpose--once in Berlin and once in London--he had played the second
violin in a Tzigany orchestra. He turned the fiddle slowly round,
looking at it with mechanical intentness. Through the passion of emotion
the sure sense of the musician was burning. His fingers smoothed the
oval brown breast of the instrument with affection. His eyes found joy
in the colour of the wood, which had all the graded, merging tints of
Autumn leaves.

"It is old--and strange," he said, his eyes going from Berry to Ingolby
and back again with a veiled look, as though he had drawn down blinds
before his inmost thoughts. "It was not made by a professional."

"It was made in the cotton-field by a slave," observed old Berry sharply,