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The Lad was a picture to see. His bow flew like lightning. His long fingers drummed and slid along the strings of the violin with bewildering swiftness. The little instrument jetted and effervesced its melody. The continuous and resounding noise poured out of it in tuneful bubbles. The air was filled with tinkling fragments of sound. The Lad’s body swayed to and fro. His face glowed. His eyes flashed. The sweat stood in drops on his forehead, but still the bow snapped and crinkled, and the instrument continued to burst in musical explosions, while the floor shook, the windows rattled, and the lamps flared and fluttered, as the dancers chased the music on.

“Heavens and arth!” said the Trapper. “I can’t stand this,” and breaking from the hold that Herbert had on him, whirled himself out to the centre of the floor and, with his face aflame with excitement and his white hair flying abroad, led the jig men off with a lightness of foot and quickness of stroke that forced the music by half a beat. The effect was electric. The room burst into applause, and the Lad fetched a stroke that seemed to rip the violin asunder. It was now a race between the violin and the dancers. One after another fell out of the circle as the moments passed, until the Trapper was left alone and was cutting it down in a fashion that both astonished and convulsed the company. More than one of the spectators went on to the floor in paroxysms of laughter. Herbert, bent over with his hands on his knees, was watching the Trapper with mouth stretched to its utmost and streaming eyes.

It is impossible to say which would have triumphed, had not an accident decided the contest and brought the jig to an abrupt termination. For even while the Lad was in the midst of the swiftest execution, the hind legs of the chair in which he was sitting were whipped from their fastenings, his heels went into the air, he turned half a somersault backward and the music stopped with a snap.

It was minutes before a word could be heard. Roars and shrieks and screams of irrepressible and uncontrollable merriment shook the house from foundation to garret. The Lad picked himself up and for the first time since they met Herbert saw his placid countenance wrinkled and seamed with the contortions of uproarious mirth. The sluggishness of his temperament for once was thoroughly agitated and the manhood which never before had come to the surface found in hilarity a visible and adequate expression. The Trapper had spun to his side and the two had joined their hands and, looking into each other’s faces, were laughing with a boisterousness that fairly shook their frames and exploded in resounding peals.

Gradually the uproar subsided and the company settled by easy transition to a quieter mood. The hours of the night were passing and the moment drawing nigh when those who had mingled their merriment must part. The old Trapper had regained his gravity and his countenance had settled to its customary repose. It seemed the general wish that the Lad would favor them with a farewell piece, and in compliance with the request of many, the old man turned to him and said:

“The hours be drawing on, Lad, and it’s reasonable that we should break up; but afore we go the folks wish to hear ye play a quiet sort of a piece that may be cheerful and pleasant like for them to remember ye by when we be gone. So, Lad, if ye have got anything in yer head that’s soft and teching, somethin’ that will sort o’ stay in the heart as the seasons come and go, I sartinly hope ye will play it for them. And as ye say ye was born by the sea, and as ye say the instrument ye hold in yer hand was gin ye by yer mother, it may be ye can play us something out of yer memory that shall tell us of her goodness to ye. Something I mean, that shall tell us of the shore where ye was born and the love that ye had afore ye laid her to rest and came to the woods seekin’ me. Can ye play us somethin’ like that, Lad?”