The bow touched the strings once or twice gently and ineffectively, and
then, his lips twitching, his eyelids as much closed as the scars on
their lids allowed them to be, he began to play.

It was the playing of one who had forgotten nearly everything of his
art, but it was sweet and true and strangely touching. To the boy it was
a miracle. He listened with the muscles of his face drawn tight in an
effort at self-control unusual in such a child, his square, brown hands
digging convulsively into the dry earth under the grass beside him. And
as the shadows of the trees crept over the road, and the oppressive heat
began to relent a little, the plaintive music went on and on, and scant,
painful tears stood on the player's face.

At last he stopped, and frowning in a puzzled way, said hoarsely, "What
is the matter, Papillon, where have we got to?"

The dog's tail stirred in answer, and at the same moment the other
listener burst into loud, emotional sobs, and the old man remembered.
"That's it, that's it. It's the boy who made me remember--'_Te rappelles
tu, te rappelles--tu, ma Toinon?_' Why do you cry, little boy? Why do
you cry?"

The boy dried his eyes on his smock sleeve.

"It--I am ten, too big to cry," he returned, with the evasion born in
him of his race, adding with the frankness peculiar to his own
personality, "but I did cry. It was beautiful."

The old man rose, and took up the dog's lead.

"Beautiful. Yes. There was a time----" He paused for a second. "What is
your name, little one?"

"Victor-Marie Joyselle."

"_Eh b'en_, Victor-Marie Joyselle, listen to me. When you have learned
to play the violin----" but Bullet-Head interrupted him.

"How do you know that I mean to learn to play the violin?" he queried,
drooping the outer corners of his eyelids in quick suspicion, "I did not
say so."

"I know. And when you have learned, remember me. And never let
anything--come here that I may put my hand on your head that you do not
forget--never let anything--duty, pleasure, money, or--or a
_woman_--come between you and your music."

The boy stared seriously into the strange face bent over him, the face
from which so much that was bad seemed for the moment to have been swept
away by the luminousness of the idea that had come to the half-idiotic
brain.

"'Duty, pleasure, money or--'"

"Or a _woman_" cried the fiddler, his face contorting with anger. "God
curse them all!" Muttering and frowning he jerked