Peppers was thumping the fiddle strings with his thumb, and screwing up the keys. His sense of melody was in a mood to overlook many a defect, and he presently thrust the fiddle under his chin and began to saw it. Then he led off with a bellow,
"Come all ye merry maidens an' listen unto me."
But the old fiddle was unaccustomed to so vigorous a virtuoso, and its bridge fell with a bang. The Parson blurted an expletive, inflected like the profane. Then he straightened the bridge, gave the fiddle a tremendous saw, and resumed his bellow. But with the accident, his first tune had gone glimmering, and he dropped to another with the agility of an acrobat.
"In eighteen hundred an' sixty-five
I thought I was quite lucky to find myself alive.
I saddled up old Bald Face my business to pursue,
An' I went to drivin' steers as I used for to do."
The fiddle was wofully out of tune, and it rasped and screeched and limped like a spavined
