idn't bring your fiddle this time.
I'd love to hear it on a night like this." Dusk was coming swiftly and
the stars had begun to glimmer.

"Oh, I don't carry it round as a business," he answered. "Fact is,
until the other night I had not played it but twice in eight years."

"Why?" She turned to him with curious interest.

"It hasn't usually brought me good luck."

"What happened the other two times?"

[Illustration: Jenkins and Lolita awed by Percy's fiddling.]

He looked off at the very bright star in the west and smiled with
whimsical ruefulness. "I love music--that is, what I call music. When
I was in the Ozarks I fiddled a lot, but discovered it did not bring me
what I wanted, so I went to work. I got a job in a bank at Oakville;
was to begin work Monday. I was powerful proud of that job, and had
got a new suit of clothes and went to town Saturday. That night there
was a dance, and they asked me to play for it." He stopped to chuckle,
but still a little regretfully. "My playing certainly made a hit.
Sunday morning a preacher lambasted the dance, and called me the
special messenger of the devil. My job was with a pillar of his
church. I didn't go to work Monday morning. It's a queer world; that
preacher was the father of Noah Ezekiel Foster, who is now working for
Benson."

She was looking out at the west, smiling; the desert wind pushed the
hair back from her forehead. "And the other time you played?"

"That was up at Blindon, Colorado." He showed some reluctance to go
ahead.

"Yes?"

"An old doctor and his daughter came to the camp to invest. I
overheard them in the next room at the boarding house, and knew a gang
of sharks was selling them a fake mine. I tried to attract their
attention through the partition by playing a fool popular song--'If you
tell him yes; you are sure to cry, by and by.'"

"Did you make them understand?" She had locked her hands round her
knees and leaned interestedly toward him.

"Yes--and also the gang. The camp made up money to pay the undertaker
to bury me next day. I still have the receipt."

"You have had a lot of experience," she said with a touch of envy.

"More than the wisdom I have gathered justifies, I fear," he replied.

"Experiences are interesting," she observed. "I haven't had many, but
I'm beginning. Daddy was professor of Sanskrit in a little one-horse
denominational college back in the hog-feeding belt of the Middle West.
Heavens!"