“Oh, you play, do you?”
Jinnie’s eyes fell upon the instrument standing in the corner of the opposite seat, wrapped in an old jacket. She nodded.
“I play some. I love my fiddle almost as much as I do Milly Ann and her kitties.”
“Won’t you play for me?” asked Mr. King, gravely putting forth his hand.
Jinnie paused a moment. Then without further hesitancy she took up the violin and unfastened it. 47
“I’ll be glad to fiddle for a king,” she said naïvely.
She did not speak as she turned and twisted the small white keys.
Outside the storm was still roaring over the hills, sweeping the lake into monstrous waves. The shriek of the wind mingled with the snap of the taut strings under the agile fingers of the hill girl. Then Jinnie began to play. Never in all his life had Theodore King seen a picture such as the girl before him made. The wondrous beauty of her, the marvelous fingers traveling over the strings, together with the moaning of the night wind, made an impression upon him he would never forget. Sometimes as her fingers sped on, her eyes were penetrating; sometimes they darkened almost to melancholy. When the last wailing note had finally died away, Jinnie dropped the instrument to her side.
“It’s lonely on nights like this when the ghosts howl about,” she observed. “They love the fiddle, ghosts do.”
Theodore King came back to himself at the girl’s words. He drew a long breath.