While all this was going on above stairs, there sat in the bar-room below a fair young man, travel-soiled and looking weary, like an over-taxed child. He was very slender, and with a sort of a lily paleness on his forehead, that fatigue or sorrow had lent to its natural delicacy. His garments were old and threadbare. Dust from the highway had settled upon them, and the crown of his hat which lay on the floor beside him, had taken a reddish tinge from the same source. He sat in a remote corner of the room, on a buffalo skin that had been flung over a wooden bench, where travellers sometimes cast themselves down for temporary rest. His hands were clasped over the smaller end of a violin-case that stood upright before him, and his forehead fell wearily upon them. "Look there!" said one of the young men, turning to his companions, who were descending the stairs, "don't that look tremendously like a fiddle?" "A fiddle! a fiddle!" ran from lip to lip, till the sound ended in a shout up stairs. "Let us see where it is. Where did it come from?" This clamor aroused the young man, who lifted his forehead from the violin-case and turned a pair of full blue eyes misty from fatigue or some other cause, upon the group. The young men paused and looked at each other. There was something touchingly beautiful about that young face which impressed them with a sentiment of awe. Still the youth gazed upon them with an unmoved look, like one who listened rather than saw with his eyes. Meanwhile, a smile stole over his lips, so child-like and sweet, that it made the young men still more reluctant to approach him; he seemed so far removed from their nature with that smile, for the lamplight glimmering through the thick waves of his golden brown hair shed a sort of glory around him. "I wonder if he plays on it himself," said one of the young men in a whisper. "Did any one speak of me?" said the stranger, in a voice so rich and sweet, that there seemed no need of other music to him. "Well, yes," answered the foremost youth, advancing toward him. "We've got a husking frolic on hand, and are all ready for dancing; but there isn't a fiddle within ten miles, nor any one to play it if there was. We might have got along with the girls singing well enough, I suppose, but the sight of this fiddle-case has set us all agoing for a little music." "Oh," said the youth, with a smile, "it's my violin you wish to have; but I am very tired; for I've travelled since noon, and your stages are wearisome over the mountains." "It's of no use asking you to play for us then, I suppose?" said the young farmer, in a disappointed tone. The youth shook his head, but very gently, as one who refuses against his will; and this gave his petitioner a gleam of hope.