“‘Hen it comes to fiddlin’,” the Chronic Loafer was saying, “they is few men can beat Sam Washin’ton. Why I’ve knowd him to set down at a party at seven at night an’ fiddle till six next mornin’ an’ play a different tune every time.”
“Did you ever hear o’ Hiram Gum?” asked the Patriarch.
“Hiram Gum!” cried the G. A. R. Man. “My father used often to speak o’ him, but he was afore my time. Drowned in the canal.”
“Wonderful, wonderful, I’ve heard tell,” exclaimed the Miller. “I can jest remember seein’ him oncet ’hen I was a wee bit o’ a boy—a leetle man with long hair an’ big eyes an’ a withered arm.”
“Yes, yes,” the old man murmured, beating his stick upon the porch. “An’ a wonderful fiddler was Hiram Gum. They was few ’round these parts could han’le a bow with that man.”
“But Sam Washin’ton’s the best fiddler they is,” the Loafer interposed emphatically.
“My dear man, Hiram Gum was more’n an earthly fiddler,” the Patriarch retorted. “He hed charms. He knowd words.”
“I don’t b’lieve in them charms furder then they ’fect snakes an’ bees.”
“But Hiram Gum was more’n an ord’nary man, an’ I otter know, fer I remember him well. He was leetle, ez the Miller sayd, an’ hed long black hair an’ a red beard that waved all around his neck, an’ big black eyes, an’ cheeks that shined like they was scoured. Then his left arm was all withered an’ wasn’t no use exceptin’ that he could crook it up like an’ work the long fingers on the fiddle-strings. No one knowd how old Hiram was, no more’n they knowd where he come from ’hen he settled up the walley sixty years ago, fer he never sayd. No one ever dast ask him ’bout sech things, fer he’d jest look black an’ say nawthin’, an’ give you sech a glance with them big eyes that you felt all creepy. Aside from that he was allus a pleasant, cheery kind of a man, an’ talked entertainin’, fer he’d traveled a heap.