"He's bewitched," said old Arsena, trembling and sick with terror.
"By whom?" cried the widow Spurlock, indignantly, laying a heavy hand on Arsena's shoulder.
"By his flute," replied Arsena, more fearfully.
At length the parson, as if in for it, and possessed to go all lengths, jumped from his chair, laid the flute on the table, and disappeared in a hidden corner of the room. Here he kept closely locked a large brass-nailed hair trunk, over which hung a looking-glass. For ten minutes the two women waited for him to reappear, and then he did reappear, not in the same clothes, but wearing the ball dress of a Virginia gentleman of an older time, perhaps his grandfather's—knee-breeches, silk stockings, silver buckles, low shoes, laces at his wrists, laces at his throat and down his bosom. And to make the dress complete he had actually tied a blue ribbon around his long silky hair. Stepping airily and gallantly to the table, he seized the flute, and with a little wave of it through the air he began to play, and to tread the mazes of the minuet, about the room, this way and that, winding and bowing, turning and gliding, but all the time fingering and blowing for dear life.
"Who would have thought it was in him?" said Arsena, her fear changed to admiration.
"I would!" said the widow.
While he was in the midst of this performance the two women had their attention withdrawn from him in a rather singular way. A poor lad hobbling on a crutch made his appearance in the street below, and rapidly but timidly swung himself along to the widow Spurlock's door. There he paused a moment, as if overcome by mortification, but finally knocked. His summons not being answered, he presently knocked more loudly.
"Hist!" said the widow to him, in a half-tone, opening a narrow slit in the curtain. "What do you want, David?"
The boy wheeled and looked up, his face at once crimson with shame. "I want to see the parson," he said, in a voice scarcely audible.
"The parson's not at home," replied the widow, sharply. "He's out; studying up a sermon." And she closed the curtain.