But now Marget announced boldly that she meant to destroy it before she was done. Perhaps she was really ashamed because her father-in-law had fiddled in the street; she had so little of any other shame that at least there was plenty to spare. Perhaps it was just a natural hate of a beautiful thing beyond her ken, or a grudge for that touch of terror in the red-haired baby’s face. In any case, she meant to steal the fiddle as soon as she could, and make an end of it before his eyes. She let the children share in this pleasant game, offering a reward, and setting them to catch him off his guard. She could not take the fiddle from him by force, because in spite of his age he would have given her a hard fight. Besides, there was as much pleasure in the promise of the crime as there could possibly be in the crime itself. She was always hinting at plots that couldn’t help but succeed, and her nods and winks to the grinning fry turned the old man cold. Her provisions for the doom of the fiddle were various in the extreme. She would burn it ... break it in pieces with the axe ... crucify it on the kitchen door. She would give it to the ragman to take away in a bag, or to the children to bury in the field. She would fling it into the barrel out at the back, and they would all stand round and watch it sink and drown. “And what’ll Gran’pa do wi’ his daft self then?” she would ask of the children with meaning smiles, while Kit sat still before an untouched plate. The children would echo her words and nudge each other and laugh, and he would clutch the fiddle under the table until it spoke. In the dark well where it was so difficult to see he felt always about him creeping fingers and prying eyes. In the narrow room which had neither corners nor dreaming-places for the old, there seemed always a host of spies that crouched and peered. When he drowsed in spite of himself on a hot afternoon, he would start awake to find stealthy hands grasping at the treasure on his knee. Instinct told him, as a rule, when the enemy was about, but sometimes the fiddle warned him with a speaking string. He used to think that it knew its danger as well as he; but of course it didn’t do to trust to that. Small wonder he learned to take it with him in his dreams!