He thought once of asking Thomas to take it away, so that at least it would be safe from Marget and her gang. This was on one of the days when his fear was more than he could bear, when the hints and nudges had over-tried his mind. What troubled him most was the thought of the fiddle being drowned. He pictured it at the bottom of the barrel in the dark, a choked and silenced creature rotting out of reach. He saw himself, armed with a stick, everlastingly trying to drag it up, and for ever watching it drift down again to die. It would be like seeing some singing-bird thrust under to drown, not once, but many times before it sank. At least it would have a chance of life if it was given away; it might hear itself speak, might even come to be loved. And if they broke it to bits, at least it would die quick, but he could not endure that rotting by degrees. He would find it hard to sleep when they took it away, but if it lay in the barrel how could he sleep at all? So when Thomas, after his duty visit, rose to go, the old man followed him out into the street. In the dark he felt the fiddle thrust into his hands, and listened dully to the hurried request. “I’ll see to it, never fret,” he said, when he understood, and moved away with the fiddle under his coat; but he hadn’t gone far before Kit was at his side, begging in anxious tones to have it back. So master and fiddle returned together to the house of hinting and spies. He said to himself that they might take it from him if they could; at least he could never bring himself to send it away. When Marget had her will of them both at last, it was his habit of old time that delivered them into her hands. A man from the marsh came along the street and hailed Kit through the window as he passed, and Kit rose and ran out as if an angel had beckoned through the pane. Marget heard him chattering in the street, and found the fiddle lying on a chair. He did not see her or even feel her near, stooped like a vulture over its watched-for prey. The strings jarred together as she took the fiddle up, but he never heard them or even turned his head. He went on talking and laughing in the street long and long after the fiddle had disappeared.... The week that followed was just seven days and nights blotted clean out of his tale of life. He never spoke of his loss, nor did he even begin to make a search. He said nothing even in the first shock of finding the fiddle gone. He just stood and stared at the chair where it had lain as one stares at a shell where the spirit has once been. The sense of irrevocable loss was as clear about the chair as about the heedless dead with their shuttered eyes. Kit had always been queer about furniture, as Thomas knew, and one of Marget’s unmeaning chairs said something to him at last.