many difficulties. Then
one of them hollowed the top of a stump for his mortar and tied his
pestle to the bough of a tree. With a rope he drew the bough down,
which, as it sprang back, lifted the pestle that ground his grain.

But money was the rarest of all things in our neighborhood those
days. Pearlash, black-salts, West India pipe-staves, and rafts of
timber brought cash, but no other products of the early settler.
Late that fall my mother gave a dance, a rude but hearty pleasuring
that followed a long conference in which my father had a part.
They all agreed to turn to, after snowfall, on the river-land, cut
a raft of timber, and send it to Montreal in the spring. Our
things had come, including D'ri's fiddle, so that we had chairs and
bedsteads and other accessories of life not common among our
neighbors. My mother had a few jewels and some fine old furniture
that her father had given her,--really beautiful things, I have
since come to know,--and she showed them to those simple folk with
a mighty pride in her eyes.

Business over, D'ri took down his fiddle, that hung on the wall,
and made the strings roar as he tuned them. Then he threw his long
right leg over the other, and, as be drew the bow, his big foot
began to pat the floor a good pace away. His chin lifted, his
fingers flew, his bow quickened, the notes seemed to whirl and
scurry, light-footed as a rout of fairies. Meanwhile the toe of
his right boot counted the increasing tempo until it came up and
down like a ratchet.

Darius Olin was mostly of a slow and sober manner. To cross his
legs and feel a fiddle seemed to throw his heart open and put him
in full gear. Then his thoughts were quick, his eyes merry, his
heart was a fountain of joy. He would lean forward, swaying his
head, and shouting "Yip!" as the bow hurried. D'ri was a
hard-working man, but the feel of the fiddle warmed and limbered
him from toe to finger. He was over-modest, making light of his
skill if he ever spoke of it, and had no ear for a compliment.
While our elders were dancing, I and others of my age were playing
games in the kitchen--kissing-games with a rush and tumble in them,
puss-in-the-corner, hunt-the-squirrel, and the like. Even then I
thought I was in love with pretty Rose Merriman. She would never
let me kiss her, even though I had caught her and had the right.
This roundelay, sung while one was in the centre of a circling
group, ready to grab at the last w