CHAPTER III
THE TRAGEDY OF THE PEASANT'S REVENGE
WHEN the twenty-two members of the Hirsute Orchestra filed into my library on the morning named for the first rehearsal, I surveyed their varied assortment of whiskers with a good deal of pride and satisfaction. It had been no easy task to find and assemble this animated keyboard with which I proposed to test my new theory of musical vibration. But before attempting to extract harmony from their whiskers I had to contend with annoying discords of individual temperament, for my assistant, Hank Wilkins, had selected these gentlemen for their whiskers alone. Here on the eve of the first rehearsal old Captain Rust showed a quarrelsome mood. He had been picked up on the Boston water front because his snowy and
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