Amos was a “good one” with the bow. He could make that fiddle fairly laugh and weep by turns, as he coaxed the vibrating strings.
Dolph had heard many kinds of music in different corners of the wide world, whither he had traveled with his father. He had sat and listened to the most famous artists of Europe, and eagerly drank in the sounds as only a true lover of melodious combinations can. He had felt his soul aroused by the grand crash of orchestras led by celebrated composers. He had sat through scores of operas, and applauded the famous song birds, with voices worth thousands of dollars a night to the fortunate possessors.
And yet this boy could not remember of ever having been so thrilled by the sound of music in all his life, as when crouching there in that thicket, just outside the “haunted” cabin, listening to the weird playing of his camp mate, Amos.
Say what you will, the surroundings have everything to do with the effect produced by music. A wild, barbaric crash of tom toms appeals more effectively to sentiment if heard among the queer lodges of a Zulu “Kraal” in South Africa, than the same strain could ever do under the towering roof of a London music hall.
So it was in this case. The danger that hovered over them, the state of Nature by which they were surrounded; and the fact that this lonely cabin in the pine woods was said to be haunted by spirits of the dead trappers—all these things united to thrill the nerves of an excitable boy like Dolph Bradley, and give him the sensation of his life.
The fiddle seemed to moan and laugh and even sob, as the delighted Amos drew his magic bow over the strings, until the whole vicinity appeared to be filled with strange spirit voices.
Had any wandering basket-making Chippewa Indian, or nomad timber cruiser, his mind filled with an ardent belief in ghosts, chanced to pass within hearing distance of those ramshackle walls on this particular night, the chances were he would have fled in abject terror, upon hearing such strange sounds.
When Amos had reached the end of his tune, after repeating the refrain in a minor key, he immediately struck up “Dixie,” and from this whipped off upon the well-known strains of the “Arkansaw Traveler.”
That air has aroused wild enthusiasm in many a concert hall, but it certainly never thrilled human hearts more than on this occasion.