He ran downstairs whistling--some music-hall song that had been popular three years ago, but was long forgotten now. To Leonard in the yard and Janet in the dairy he sounded like a cheerful ghost. They both thought of going to meet him, but both at last decided to leave him alone. The house was full of the delicious smell of rain, and the wind crooned through it tenderly, rattling the doors and windows, and fluttering the untidy rags of wall-paper that here and there hung loose on the walls. Nigel went into the kitchen, where the fire was burning. He sat down by it and warmed his hands, though he was not really cold. He had not seen a fire for three years. Then suddenly he noticed something in the corner--it was his fiddle-case, wrapped in green baize. Nigel had always passed for something of a musician, and during a few stormy years spent in London with his father had been fairly well taught. Farming and scheming had never made him forget his fiddle, though occasionally it had lain for weeks as it lay now, wrapped up in dusty cloths in the corner. He stooped down and took it out of its many covers. It was a fairly good instrument of modern make, best in its low tones. All the strings were broken except the G, but he found a coil of the D in the case, and screwed it on. By means of harmonics and the seventh position he could manage fairly well with two strings. It seemed a terribly long time since he had felt a fiddle under his chin, and sniffed its peculiar smell of sweet varnished wood and rosin. He lifted his arm slowly, and the bow dropped on the strings. It was scratchy, and he felt horribly stiff, but in course of time matters improved a little, and Len and Janey, together in the Dutch barn, smiled at each other as the strains of Handel's "Largo" drifted out to them. "He'll feel better now," said Leonard. Nigel forgot the "Largo" in the middle, and started "O Caro Nome," from Rigoletto. His taste in music had always been the despair of his teachers. He had never seemed able to appreciate the modern school, or, indeed, the more advanced of the ancients. He had a desperate fondness for Balfe and Donizetti, for the most sugary moods of Verdi and Gounod. He revelled in high notes, trills and tremolo--"O Caro Nome" and "I dreamt that I dwelt in marble halls" appealed to a side of him which was definitely sentimental. He stood there by the window, swaying sentimentally from side to side, shaking shrill colorature from his violin, regardless of the squeaking of a nearly rosinless bow.