"If you can play, there it is," he said after a slight pause, and handed
the fiddle over.
It was true that Jethro Fawe loved the fiddle. He had played it in many
lands. Twice, in order to get inside the palace of a monarch for a
purpose--once in Berlin and once in London--he had played the second
violin in a Tzigany orchestra. He turned the fiddle slowly round,
looking at it with mechanical intentness. Through the passion of emotion
the sure sense of the musician was burning. His fingers smoothed the
oval brown breast of the instrument with affection. His eyes found joy
in the colour of the wood, which had all the graded, merging tints of
Autumn leaves.
"It is old--and strange," he said, his eyes going from Berry to Ingolby
and back again with a veiled look, as though he had drawn down blinds
before his inmost thoughts. "It was not made by a professional."
"It was made in the cotton-field by a slave," observed old Berry sharply,
yet with a content which overrode antipathy to his visitor.
Jethro put the fiddle to his chin, and drew the bow twice or thrice
sweepingly across the strings. Such a sound had never come from Berry's
violin before.
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