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Field took it and looked at it and sounded it. On every side the men turned face in eager expectancy.

“He can play, that feller.”

“I’ll bet he can. He handles her as if he knew her.”

“You bet your life. Tune up, Cap.”

Williams came from the obscurity somewhere, and looked over the shoulders of the men.

“Down in front!” somebody called, and the men took seats on the benches, leaving Field standing with the violin in hand. He smiled around upon them in a frank, pleased way, quite ready to show his skill. He played Annie Laurie, and a storm of applause broke out.

“Hoo-ray! Bully for you!”

“Sam, you’re out of it!”

“Sam, your name is Mud!”

“Give us another, Cap!”

“It ain’t the same fiddle!”

He played again some simple tune, and he played it with the touch which showed the skilled amateur. As he played, Mrs. Field noticed a growing restlessness on Williams’ part. He moved about uneasily. He gnawed at his finger-nails. His eyes glowed with a singular fire. His hands drummed and fingered. At last he approached, and said, roughly:

“Let me take that fiddle a minute.”

“Oh, cheese it, Williams!” the men cried. “Let the other man play.”

“What do you want to do with the fiddle–think it’s a music-box?” asked Sam, its owner.

“Go to hell!” said Williams. As Field gave the violin over to him, his hands seemed to tremble with eagerness.

He raised his bow, and struck into an imposing, brilliant strain, and the men fell back in astonishment.

“Well, I’ll be damned!” gasped the owner of the violin.

“Keep quiet, Sam.”

Mrs. Field looked at her husband. “Why, Ed, he is playing Sarasate!”

“That’s what he is,” he returned, slangily, too much astonished to do more than gaze. Williams played on.

There was a faint defect in the high notes, as if his fingers did not touch the strings properly, but his bow action showed cultivation and breadth of feeling. As he struck into one of those difficult octave-leaping movements his face became savage. On the E string a squeal broke forth; he flung the violin into Sam’s lap with a ferocious curse, and then, extending his hands, hard, crooked to fit the axe-helve, calloused and chapped, he said to Field:

“Look at my hands! Lovely things to play with, aren’t they?”

His voice trembled with passion. He turned and went outside. As he passed Mrs. Field his head was bowed, and he was uttering a groaning cry like one suffering physical pain.

“That’s what drink does for a man,” Ridgeley said, as they watched Williams disappear down the swampers’ trail.

“That man has been a violinist,” said Field. “What’s he doing up here?”

“Came to get away from himself, I guess,” Ridgeley replied.

“I’m afraid he’s failed,” said Field, as he put his arm about his wife and led her to the sleigh.

The ride home was made mainly in silence. “Oh, the splendid stillness!” the woman kept saying in her heart. “Oh, the splendid moonlight, the marvellous radiance!” Everywhere a heavenly serenity–not a footstep, not a bell, not a cry, not a cracking tree–nothing but vivid light, white snow dappled and lined with shadows, and trees etched against a starlit sky. Unutterable splendor of light and sheen and shadow. Wide wastes of snow so white the stumps stood like columns of charcoal. A night of Nature’s making, when she is tired of noise and blare of color.

And in the midst of it stood the camp, with its reek of obscenity, foul odors, and tobacco smoke, to which a tortured soul must return.

IV

The following Saturday afternoon, as Ridgeley and Field entered the office, Williams rose to meet them. He looked different–finer some way, Field imagined. At any rate, he was perfectly sober. He was freshly shaven, and though his clothes were rough, he appeared the man of education he really was. His manner was cold and distant.

“I’d like to be paid off, Mr. Ridgeley,” he said. “I guess what’s left of my pay will take me out of this.”

“Where do you propose to go?” Ridgeley asked, with kindly interest.

Williams must have perceived his kindliness, for he answered: “I’m going home to my wife, to my violin. I am going to try living once more.”

After he had gone out, Field said, “I wonder if he’ll do it?”

“Oh, I shouldn’t wonder. I’ve seen men brace up just as mysteriously as that and stay right by their resolutions. I thought he didn’t look like a common lumber Jack when he came in.”

“Ed, your playing did it!” Mrs. Field cried, when she heard of Williams’ resolution. “Oh, how happy his wife will be! She’ll save him yet!”

“Well, I don’t know; depends on what kind of a woman she is.”