kens of it were audible for a long
distance in all directions. If, however, there is no sound where no
ear hears, silence rested upon the country-side until an hour later.
Then a lonely figure came shivering from the direction of the town, not
by the road, but slinking through the snow upon the frozen river. It
came slowly, as though very tired, and cautiously, too, often turning
its head to look behind. Finally it reached the pier, and stopped as
if to listen.
Within the house above, a piano of evil life was being beaten to death
for its sins and clamoring its last cries horribly. The old shed
rattled in every part with the thud of many heavy feet, and trembled
with the shock of noise--an incessant roar of men's voices, punctuated
with women's screams. Then the riot quieted somewhat; there was a
clapping of hands, and a violin began to squeak measures intended to be
Oriental. The next moment the listener scrambled up one of the rotting
piles and stood upon the veranda. A shaft of red light through a
broken shutter struck across the figure above the shoulders, revealing
a bloody handkerchief clumsily knotted about the head, and, beneath it,
the face of Joe Louden.
He went to the broken shutter and looked in. Around the blackened walls
of the room stood a bleared mob, applausively watching, through a fog
of smoke, the contortions of an old woman in a red calico wrapper, who
was dancing in the centre of the floor. The fiddler--a rubicund person
evidently not suffering from any great depression of spirit through the
circumstance of being "out on bail," as he was, to Joe's intimate
knowledge--sat astride a barrel, resting his instrument upon the foamy
tap thereof, and playing somewhat after the manner of a 'cellist; in no
wise incommoded by the fact that a tall man (known to a few friends as
an expert in the porch-climbing line) was sleeping on his shoulder,
while another gentleman (who had prevented many cases of typhoid by
removing old plumbing from houses) lay on the floor at the musician's
feet and endeavored to assist him by plucking the strings of the fiddle.
Joe opened the door and went in. All of the merry company (who were
able) turned sharply toward the door as it opened; then, recognizing
the new-comer, turned again to watch the old woman. One or two nearest
the door asked the boy, without great curiosity, what had happened to
his head. He merely shook it faintly in reply, and crossed the room to
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