452 WILD SCENES AND WILD HUNTERS. 



menced a renewal of the attack, as soon as the first surprise 

 was over, more furiously than ever. This was too much for 

 the poor fiddler, and most especially when the head of a great 

 wolf was thrust up between the boards of the roof, within a 

 few inches of where he sat. He gave himself up now for a 

 gone darkie, and with the horrified exclamation — 



"Bress God !— who dar ?" 



He fell to fiddling Yankee Doodle with all his might, uncon- 

 sciously, as the dying swan is said to sing its own requiem in 

 its closing moments. With the first notes of the air silence 

 commenced ; Orpheus had conquered ! the brutes owned the 

 subduing spell, and the terror-stricken fiddler, when he came 

 to himself — astonished at the sudden cessation of hostilities — • 

 saw he was surrounded by the most attentive and certainly 

 appreciative audience he had ever played before — for the 

 moment there was the slightest cessation of the music, every 

 listener sprang forward to renew the battle, and set his pipe- 

 stem legs to flying about in the air again. 



But he had now learned the spell, and so long as he 

 continued to play with tolerable correctness, was compara- 

 tively safe. The old fiddler soon forgot his terror now in 

 professional pride, for he was decidedly fiattered by such 

 intense appreciation; and entering fully into the spirit of 

 the thing, played with a gusto and efiect such as he thought 

 he had never before surpassed or even equalled. Even the 

 wedding, with its warm lights, its sweetened whiskey, was 

 forgotten for the time in the glow of this new professional 

 triumph. 



But all pleasures have their draw-backs on this earth; and 

 as time progressed, he began, with all his enthusiasm, to feel 

 very natural symptoms of cold, fatigue, and even exhaustion. 

 But it would not do — he could not stop a moment before they 

 were at him again — and there they persistently sat, that 

 shaggy troop of connoisseurs, fidgeting on their haunches. 



