"That's Lute Cradlebow fiddlin' out thar'," George Olver explained to me. "I don't want 'em to skeer him off, for it ain't every night Lute takes kindly to his fiddle. There's times he won't touch it for days and days. Talkin' about Lute's fiddlin'--I suppose it's true--there was some fellows out from Boston happened to hear him playin' one night, up to Sandwich te-own, and they offered him a hundred and fifty a month--I Reckon that's true--to go along with some fiddlin' company thar' to Boston, and he'd got more if he'd stuck to it, but Lute, he come driftin' back in the course of a week or two. I don't blame him. He said he was sick on't. "I tell you how 'tis, teacher. Folks that lives along this shore are allus talkin' more'n any other sort of folks about going off, and complainin' about the hard livin', and cussin' the stingy sile, but thar's suthin' about it sorter holts to 'em. They allus come a driftin' back in some shape or other, in the course of a year or two at the farderest." The door was thrown wide open and my recreant guests reappeared half-dragging, half-pushing before them a matchless Adonis in glazed tarpaulin trousers and a coarse sailor's blouse. I recognized at once in the perfect physical beauty of the eccentric fiddler only a reproduction, in a larger form, of that sadly depraved young cherub who had danced before me in ghostly habiliments on the way to school. It was the imp's older brother. "Here's Lute, teacher!" cried Harvey; "he wouldn't come in 'cause he wasn't slicked up. But I tell him clo's don't make much difference with a humly dog, anyway. Come along, Lute, and put them blushes in your pocket to keep yer hands warm in cold weather. Teacher, this is our champion fiddler, inventor, whale-fisher, cranberry-picker, and potato-bugger,--Luther Larkin Cradlebow!" The youth of the tuneful and birdlike name dealt his tormentor a hearty though affectionate cuff on the ears, and being thus suddenly thrust forward, he doffed his broad souwester, took the hand I held out to him, and, stooping down, kissed me, quite in a simple and audible manner, on the cheek. It was done with such gentle, serious embarrassment, and Luther Larkin Cradlebow was so boyish and quaint looking, withal, that I felt not the slightest inclination to blush, but I heard Harvey's saucy giggle. "Gad!" said he; "hear the old women talk about Lute's being bashful and not knowin' how to act with the girls! Now I call them party easy manners, eh, Lovell? What do you think, Lovell?" "Ahem, certainly,--" responded Lovell, smiling in vague sympathy with the laughing group. "_I_ call them so,--certainly,--_I_ do." Only George Olver turned a sober, reassuring face to the blushing Cradlebow. "Give us a tune, Lutie," said he. "Lord, _I'd_ laugh if I could get the music out o' them strings that you can."