"Simeon!" cried the woman. "What was that?"
The man did not answer. His eyes were fixed on the barn.
"Simeon, it's a fiddle!" exclaimed Mrs. Holly, as a second tone quivered on the air "And it's in our barn!"
Simeon's jaw set. With a stern ejaculation he crossed the porch and entered the kitchen.
In another minute he had returned, a lighted lantern in his hand.
"Simeon, d—don't go," begged the woman, tremulously. "You—you don't know what's there."
"Fiddles are not played without hands, Ellen," retorted the man severely. "Would you have me go to bed and leave a half-drunken, ungodly minstrel fellow in possession of our barn? To-night, on my way home, I passed a pretty pair of them lying by the roadside—a man and a boy with two violins. They're the culprits, likely,—though how they got this far, I don't see. Do you think I want to leave my barn to tramps like them?"
"N—no, I suppose not," faltered the woman, as she rose tremblingly to her feet, and followed her husband's shadow across the yard.
Once inside the barn Simeon Holly and his wife paused involuntarily. The music was all about them now, filling the air with runs and trills and rollicking bits of melody. Giving an angry exclamation, the man turned then to the narrow stairway and climbed to the hayloft above. At his heels came his wife, and so her eyes, almost as soon as his fell upon the man lying back on the hay with the moonlight full upon his face. Instantly the music dropped to a whisper, and a low voice came out of the gloom beyond the square of moonlight which came from the window in the roof.
"If you'll please be as still as you can, sir. You see he's asleep and he's so tired," said the voice.