substituted a bachelor. "He is just beginning;
listen."

Through all the other sounds of music, there penetrated from an unseen
source, a sawish, scraped, vibration of catgut, pathetic, insistent,
painstaking, and painful beyond belief.

"He is in a terrible way to-night," said the widower.

Miss Hinsdale laughed. "Worse every night. The violinist is young
Wetherford Swift," she explained to Harkless. "He is very much in love,
and it doesn't agree with him. He used to be such a pleasant boy,
but last winter he went quite mad over Helen Sherwood, Mr. Meredith's
cousin, our beauty, you know--I am so sorry she isn't here; you'd be
interested in meeting her, I'm sure--and he took up the violin."

"It is said that his family took up chloroform at the same time," said
the widower.

"His music is a barometer," continued the lady, "and by it the
neighborhood nightly observes whether Miss Sherwood has been nice to him
or not."

"It is always exceedingly plaintive," explained another.

"Except once," rejoined Miss Hinsdale. "He played jigs when she came
home from somewhere or other, in June."

"It was Tosti's 'Let Me Die,' the very next evening," remarked the
widower.

"Ah," said one of the bachelors, "but his joy was sadder for us than his
misery. Hear him now."

"I think he means it for 'What's this dull town to me,'" observed
another, with some rancor. "I would willingly make the town sufficiently
exciting for him--"

"If there were not an ordinance against the hurling of missiles,"
finished the widower.

The piano executing the funeral march ceased to execute, discomfited by
the persistent and overpowering violin; the banjo and the coster-songs
were given over; even the collegians' music was defeated; and the
neighborhood was forced to listen to the dauntless fiddle, but not
without protest, for there came an indignant, spoken chorus from the
quarter whence the college songs had issued: "Ya-a-ay! Wetherford, put
it away! _She'll_ come back!" The violin played on.

"We all know each other here, you see, Mr. Harkless," Miss Hinsdale
smiled benignantly.

"They didn't bother Mr. Wetherford Swift," said the widower. "Not that
time. Do you hear him?--'Could ye come back to me, Douglas'?"

"Oh, but it isn't absence that is killing him and his friends," cried
one of the young women. "It is Brainard Macauley."

"That is a mistake," said Tom Meredith, as easily as he could. "There
goes Jim's double quartette. List