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 
« “uing spell, and the terror-stricken fiddler, when he came 
t. 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 flattered by such 
intense appreciation; and entering fully into the spirit of 
the thing, played with a gusto and effect 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 2 moment before they 
were at him again—and there they persistently sat, that 
shaggy troop of connoisseurs, fidgeting on their haunches, 
