The Project Gutenberg EBook of Fiddles, by F. Hopkinson Smith

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Title: Fiddles
1909

Author: F. Hopkinson Smith

Release Date: December 3, 2007 [EBook #23698]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FIDDLES ***

Produced by David Widger

FIDDLES

By F. Hopkinson Smith

1909

This is Marny's story, not mine. He had a hammer in his hand at the time
and a tack between his teeth.

"Going to hang Fiddles right under the old fellow's head," he burst out.
"That's where he belongs. I'd have given a ten-acre if he could have
drawn a bead on that elk himself. Fiddles behind a .44 Winchester
and that old buck browsing to windward"--and he nodded at the elk's
head--"would have made the village Mayor sit up and think. What a
picturesque liar you are, Fiddles"--here the point of the tack
was pressed into the plaster with Marny's fat thumb--"and what a
good-for-nothing, breezy, lovable vagabond"--(Bang! Bang! Hammer at play
now)--"you could be when you tried. There!"

Marny stepped back and took in the stuffed head and wide-branched
antlers of the magnificent elk (five feet six from skull to tips) and
the small, partly faded miniature of a young man in a student cap and
high-collared coat.

I waited and let him run on. It is never wise to interrupt Marny. He
will lose the thread of his talk if you do, and though he starts off
immediately on another lead, and one, perhaps equally graphic, he
has left you suspended in mid-air so far as the tale you were getting
interested in is concerned. Who Fiddles was and why his Honor the Mayor
should sit up and think; why, too, the miniature of the young man--and
he _was_ young and remarkably good-looking, as I well knew, having seen
the picture many times before on his mantel--should now be suspended
below the elk's head, would come out in time if I loosened my ear-flaps
and buttoned up my tongue, but not if I reversed the operation.

"Ah, you young fraud," he went on--the position of both head and
miniature pleased him now--"do you remember the time I hauled you out
from under the table when the hucksters were making a door-mat of your
back; and the t