by his imagination, and tell her to note how his soul had caught the
music of the spheres. He would surround himself with an atmosphere of
his own. His rage, his love, and his malignant hate, his tenderness and
his lust should fill the barber's shop with a flood which would drown the
Gorgio raider. He laughed to himself, almost unconsciously. Then
suddenly he leaned his cheek to the instrument and drew the bow across
the strings with a savage softness. The old cottonfield fiddle cried out
with a thrilling, exquisite pain, but muffled, as a hand at the lips
turns agony into a tender moan. Some one--some spirit--in the fiddle
was calling for its own.

Five minutes later-a five minutes in which people gathered at the
door of the shop, and heads were thrust inside in ravished wonder--the
palpitating Romany lowered the fiddle from his chin, and stood for a
minute looking into space, as though he saw a vision.

He was roused by old Berry's voice. "Das a fiddle I wouldn't sell for a
t'ousand dollars. If I could play like dat I wouldn't sell it for ten
t'ousand. You kin play a fiddle to make it worth a lot--you."

The Romany handed back the instrument. "It's got something inside it
that makes it better than it is. It's not a good fiddle, but it has
something--ah, man alive, it has something!" It was as though he was
talking to himself.

Berry made a quick, eager gesture. "It's got the cotton-fields and the
slave days in it. It's got the whip and the stocks in it; it's got the
cry of the old man that'd never see his children ag'in. That's what the
fiddle's got in it."