a
caution to hoarse owls."

The new turn given to the piano-excitement in Hardscrabble by Mo Mercer
was like pouring oil on fire to extinguish it, for it blazed out with
more vigor than ever. That it was a musical instrument made it a rarer
thing in that wild country than if it had been an animal, and people of
all sizes, colors, and degrees were dying to see and hear it.

Jim Cash was Mo Mercer's right-hand man: in the language of refined
society, he was "Mo's toady;" in the language of Hardscrabble, he was
"Mo's wheel-horse." Cash believed in Mo Mercer with an abandonment that
was perfectly ridiculous. Mr. Cash was dying to see the piano, and the
first opportunity he had alone with his Quixote he expressed the desire
that was consuming his vitals.

"We'll go at once and see it," said Mercer.

"Strangers!" echoed the frightened Cash.

"Humbug! Do you think I have visited the 'Capitol' twice, and don't know
how to treat fashionable society? Come along at once, Cash," said
Mercer.

Off the pair started, Mercer all confidence, and Cash all fears as to
the propriety of the visit. These fears Cash frankly expressed; but
Mercer repeated for the thousandth time his experience in the
fashionable society of the "Capitol, and pianos," which he said "was
synonymous;" and he finally told Cash, to comfort him, that, however
abashed and ashamed he might be in the presence of the ladies, "he
needn't fear of sticking, for he would pull him through."

A few minutes' walk brought the parties on the broad galleries of the
house that contained the object of so much curiosity. The doors and
windows were closed, and a suspicious look was on everything.

"Do they always keep a house closed up this way that has a piano in it?"
asked Cash mysteriously.

"Certainly," replied Mercer: "the damp would destroy its tones."

Repeated knocks at the doors, and finally at the windows, satisfied both
Cash and Mercer that nobody was at home. In the midst of their
disappointment, Cash discovered a singular machine at the end of the
gallery, crossed by bars and rollers and surmounted with an enormous
crank. Cash approached it on tiptoe; he had a presentiment that he
beheld the object of his curiosity, and, as its intricate character
unfolded itself, he gazed with distended eyes, and asked Mercer, with
breathless anxiety, what that strange and incomprehensible box was.

Mercer turned to the thing as coolly as a north wind to an icicle, and
said