ng of his foot and sat down beside
me. He said he was badly out of practice when I offered congratulations.
The first fiddler was a small man, with a short leg, and a character
that was minus one dimension. It had length and breadth but no
thickness. He sat with his fellow player on a little platform at one end
of the room. He was an odd man who wandered all over the township with
his fiddle. He played by ear, and I have seen babies smile and old men
dance when his bow was swaying. I remember that when I heard it for the
first time, I determined that I should be a fiddler if I ever grew to be
a man. But David told me that fiddlers were a worthless lot, and that
no wise man should ever fool with a fiddle. One is lucky, I have since
learned, if any dream of yesterday shall stand the better light of today
or the more searching rays of tomorrow.

'Choose yer partners fer Money Musk!' the caller shouted.

Hope and I got into line, the music started, the circles began to sway.
Darwin Powers, an old but frisky man, stood up beside the fiddlers,
whistling, with sobriety and vigour, as they played. It was a pleasure
to see some of the older men of the neighbourhood join the dizzy riot by
skipping playfully in the corners. They tried to rally their unwilling
wives, and generally a number of them were dancing before the night was
over. The life and colour of the scene, the fresh, young faces of the
girls some of them models of rustic beauty--the playful antics of the
young men, the merrymaking of their fathers, the laughter, the airs of
gallantry, the glances of affection--there is a magic in the thought of
it all that makes me young again.

There were teams before and behind us when we came home, late at night,
so sleepy that the stars went reeling as we looked at them.

'This night is the end of many things,' I remarked.

'And the beginning of better ones, I hope,' was her answer.

'Yes, but they are so far away,' I said, 'you leave home to study and I
am to be four years in college-possibly I can finish in three.'

'Perfectly terrible!' she said, and then she added the favourite phrase
and tone of her mother: 'We must be patient.'

'I am very sorry of one thing,' I said. 'What's that?'

'I promised not to ask you for one more kiss.'

'Well then,' said she, 'you--you--needn't ask me.' And in a moment I
helped her out at the door.

Chapter 25

David Brower had prospered, as I have said before, and now he was
chi