My companion opened the conversation by asking to see one of her late husband’s instruments to compare it with that we had with us, and in the course of the testing he managed that our fiddle should find its way into the widow’s hands. In a moment or two I saw her start and look at it more closely, then take it nearer the light and examine it closely at the scroll work close to the screwing pegs, and then she turned to my companion perfectly amazed, and said—
“Do you know what I’ve discovered?”
“What?”
“This is my fiddle—the one that was stolen from M———the £50 Cremona lost on the Penicuick road.”
“Impossible!—that one was bought in Newcastle.”
“That’s nothing. I don’t care though it had been bought in Australia—it’s his fiddle. Look here”—and she pointed to some scratching on the varnish in among the scroll carving—“what do you call that?”
We both looked very closely, and I said at last—
“It’s like the letter M scratched with a pin.”
“It is just that, and was scratched with a pin in this very room. He did it one night before me, saying, ‘If ever any one runs away with my fiddle I’ll know it by that whether they change the ticket or not.’ You need not take the fiddle away with you, for I claim it as mine.”
Here was a poser, but I was not to be so easily deprived of what was mine only on trust. I quietly took the instrument into my hands, saying—