WHEN CRAWLEY LOST HIS HEAD
Teddy did not move, nor did Dolph. They could not have done so, even had they wanted, so enthralled did that strange scene hold them.
No one looked toward the window, fortunately, and consequently the presence there of the two peeping canoe boys was not discovered.
Of course, this sudden coming of Crawley upon the scene had created a diversion. The girl started up with a little cry of grief, as though bewailing the possible finish of her pleasure. Hearing all this, Amos, too, ceased to draw his bow across the strings, and as the music abruptly ceased, he opened his eyes.
“Go on, consarn ye!” exclaimed Crawley, in a voice that fairly trembled with eagerness, “keep right along wid yer fiddlin’ I tell yer. Don’t yer dar’ ter stop jest thar—finish that piece like ye was a-doin’! By glory! ain’t I been a-tryin’ ter git the second part o’ that Traveler tune this ten months, an’ allers swingin’ right around inter the fust half agin. Go on, boy, play it all ther way through, I tells yer! I’m jest fairly wild ter hear how she goes. By gum—but ye kin make thet ole fiddle o’ mine talk some. Ye jest fair seem ter burn the strings wid yer bow. I ain’t never herd sech music. Go on! Go on, boy, play!”
Crawley was so excited that he fairly shouted these words at Amos, who hardly understood what it all meant, but sat there with his bow upraised, staring.
Teddy came very near laughing out loud at the singular coincidence. He remembered hearing his father tell of an old Italian professor of music in Cincinnati, Tosso by name, who, whenever he played this favorite selection in public used to tell a humorous story in connection with it.
This was to the effect that once upon a time he was riding horseback through the backwoods of Arkansas, and asked for accommodations over night of the owner of a cabin, who was sitting on a bench sawing away at a fiddle. So while he kept on going over and over the same melody, in his rude way, he shook his head as if he did not like to be interrupted, and just took time to say he had no room or food to spare; after which he harked back, and began the same old strain over and over.
Thereupon the music master had asked for the loan of the battered fiddle a few minutes, and he would show him how the Arkansaw Traveler should be played all the way through. The settler’s delight was unbounded. He declared the traveler must stay over night, even if he and the old woman had to sleep in the loft; and he was welcome to all the food and whiskey they possessed; for he said that for ten years he had been constantly trying to catch onto that second half, which always eluded him.
So history sometimes repeats itself.