And I see it took up her mind some. She didn’t seem to dislike it now, after the first shock wuz over. And I left her propped up on her piller a listenin’, and went down and got supper. Wall, it wuz all I could do to get that man away from the instrument long enough to eat. He seemed to be kinder absent-minded and lost like till he got back to it agin. Wall, it had been still for some time; you couldn’t hear a thing from the dinin’ room up in Melinda’s room. And when he bust out agin imegiatly after supper, it wuz too much, too much, for I spoze she had been in a drowze. It wuz “Hold the Fort” he belched out in, with all the steam on. He had a way, Peter had, of bustin’ out loudest when he begun, and then kinder dwindle down towards the last of the piece. (But it wuz one of ’em on _his_ side, and I didn’t murmur, not out loud, I didn’t.) Wall, I knew what wuz before me at the first volley of sound. I sez to myself: “Melinda Ann! Melinda Ann!” and hurried upstairs. And there she wuz layin’ back on her piller with her eyes rolled up in her head and fixed, and her nuckels clenched. Wall, I brung her to agin after a long and tejus process, and then agin I see that she sort o’ enjoyed it; and I left her propped up and went down and helped do up the work. Wall, Peter never stopped playin’ till a late bedtime. And then I might have slept some at first, only Josiah begun a noise where he left off, a scoldin’ and a jawin’. And oh! my sufferin’s that I suffered with that man. I reminded him that Peter wuz a relation on _his_ side—no avail. I brung up his lonesome state. Josiah said, “He’d ought to be lonesome! He’d ought to be fur away in the middle of the desert or on a island in the depths of the seas. Alone! alone!” He raved, he swore, he said, “Dumb him!” repeatedly. You see Josiah hated music anyway, only the very softest, lowest kind; and Peter’ses wuz powerful—powerful and continuous. But I reminded Josiah Allen in the cause of duty that he had complained that the house wuz too still sence Melinda Ann had come, and he wanted a noise. “I never wanted to be in a Lunatick Asylum,” sez he; “I didn’t hanker for Bedlam,” he yelled. Wall, suffice it to say that I never got a wink of sleep till past midnight. And mebby it wuz about one o’clock, when all of a sudden we wuz all waked up by a low, rumblin’ noise, strange and weird. My first thought was a earthquake, and then a cyclone. But Josiah Allen had waked up first and got his senses before I did, and sez he: “It is that dumb fool a playin’ on a base viol.” And that wuz what it proved to be. He had got lonesome in the night, and got up and onpacked the base viol, and wuz playin’ a low, mournful piece on it, so’s not to wake us up. He said in the mornin’ that he held it in for that purpose. He is a good-natured creeter, and a mourner, there hain’t no doubt on’t, and so I told Josiah. And he snapped out enough to take my head off: