rmerly was, boots which had seen their
best days, and a wide-awake hat,--such was the elegant and excessively
fashionable attire of Dick, the old black fiddler, who, when dressed
in these rags, believed himself as handsome as Adonis.

After taking a parting glance at the piece of looking-glass held by
three nails on the wall of his bedroom, and favoring himself with a
smile that expressed a personal satisfaction, Richard took his fiddle
under his arm and set out.

The moon was shining over his head, the stars sparkled--to use the
fiddler's picturesque expression--like "gilt nails driven into the
ceiling of the firmament by an audacious upholsterer." No sound could
be heard, save the crackling of the snow beneath Richard's feet, as he
put them down with the heaviness of old age. The road he had to follow
was very narrow; its complicated windings passed through a dense
forest which the axe had not yet assailed, and whose depths were still
as entirely unknown as at the period when the Redskins were the sole
owners of the territory. This track could only be followed by a
pedestrian; no cart road existed for several miles round.

The profound solitude of this road must infallibly produce its
effect--that of fear or apprehension--on a being belonging to the
human race; but at this moment the old man was so deeply plunged in
thought that nothing could make him forget the anxiety he felt at not
arriving in time at the place where he was expected. He doubled his
pace as he thought of the furious glances that would be bestowed on
him by those whose joys his absence retarded, and he regretted the
time he had spent in giving an extra polish to his coat buttons and in
pulling up the two splendid points of his shirt collar.

While thinking of the reproaches that menaced him, old Dick looked up,
and the moon shining above his head proved to him that he was even
more behindhand than he had supposed. His legs then began moving like
the wheels of a locomotive, so as to keep him constantly ahead of
certain black shadows which seemed to be following his every footstep
on the forest path.

They were coyotes, horrible coyotes, that cast these shadows, and from
time to time gave a snarl of covetousness or impatience; but old Dick
paid no attention to them. Ere long, however, he was obliged to devote
his entire attention to what was going on behind him. He had walked
half the distance, and already saw through the forest arcades the
clear