Sometimes, when he was tired, he talked to the crowd, telling them of old dances and melodies and old times. They left the tree-trunks, and came nearer by degrees, the lads with their hands in their pockets and the children with fingers in their mouths. He looked round at their friendly eyes, and thought how nearly all eyes changed when a fiddle was played. If anybody laughed or jeered at first, he was an open or a sneaking worshipper before long. Sometimes the women who lived near brought him a cup of tea and a snack to eat, and nothing he ever had at Marget’s heartened him half so much. And on especially blessed days when the tunes went like so much unwound silk, there came somebody who remembered Fiddlin’ Kit. It was after one of these days, taking him clean back to happier times, that he brought a horrible vengeance on himself. One afternoon, when the children were coming home from school, he went out to the forbidden footpath under the chestnuts and played. He forgot all about the cottage just across, and Marget of the music-hating heart. He forgot that he was only a beggar-man and that somebody paid his keep. He only remembered that he was Fiddlin’ Kit, at sight of whom folk had always danced, and the feet of the children stirred his ancient blood. The young feet, the feet of the coming generation of dancers, always stirred his blood. From the end of the village they came skipping down the road, singing a little tune they had learned in school. Most of them came in twos and threes, linked together by twining arms, or trailing a little cloak by its hem in the dust. Some whispered great mysteries in others’ ears. Some held a little school on the kerb, as if they had not already had enough, and in the midst of the lesson gathered themselves up and ran. And all the time, here and there, some of them sang, and the tune that they sang got into the fiddle and played. Kit, down the long perspective of the street, saw the white school from which they had come, and the tune, as it were, coming with them out of the door. He had known the song long ago, and he never forgot a tune. It was only in nature that the fiddle should sing, too.