One or two children were playing in the road in front of the tavern, the wind fluttering their pinafores, and blowing their clothes against their limbs. A little boy with a mouth-organ was playing a vague and plaintive tune, to which two little girls were dancing. Nigel stood listening for some minutes, till both the moaning wind and the creaking tune had woven themselves together into a symphony of wretchedness. Then he put down his beer, and took up his violin. He unfastened the case, unrolled the chrysalis of wrappings, and laid the instrument against his shoulder. The next minute a shrill wail rose up and challenged the wind. The bar was nearly empty, but Nigel would not have cared had it been full. He stood in the doorway, his hair blowing and ruffling madly, his body swaying, as he forced his fiddle into a duet with the wind. He had never before tried to extemporise, his violin had been for him a memory of sugary tunes, each wrapped up in the tinsel of a little past--he had never tried to wring the present out of it in a sudden, fierce expression of the emotions that tortured him as he played. This evening he wanted to join the wind in its wailing race, to rush with it over the common, to tear with it through the hedges, and sweep with it over the water. He forced out of his fiddle the cries of his own heart--they rose up and challenged the wind. The wind hushed a little--fluttered, throbbed--was still ... the fiddle tore through the silence and shattered it ... then the wind rose, and drummed savagely. Nigel dashed his bow down on the deep strings, and forced deep sounds out of them. The wind galloped up to a shriek--and Nigel's hand tore into harmonics, and wailed there till the wind was only puffing and sobbing. Then the fiddle sobbed. The fiddle and the wind sobbed together ... till the wind swung up a scale--up came the fiddle after it ... the wind rushed higher and higher, it whistled in the dark eaves of the inn, and the fiddle squeaked higher and higher, and Nigel's fingers strained on the fingerboard--he would not be beaten, blind Nature should not defeat him, two should play her game. The wind was like a maniac as it whistled its arpeggios--the casements of the house were rattling like tin, the trees were swishing and bending, the water in the ruts of the lane was rippling, doors were creaking and banging, the fiddle was straining and shrieking ... then suddenly the string broke. Nigel dropped his bow, angry and defeated. The duet with the wind was over. Then he noticed a strange thing. He had been staring blindly and stupidly ahead of him, all his senses merged into sound, but now he saw that the road was crowded with children, and they were all dancing--little girls with their petticoats held high, little boys jumping aimlessly in their clumsy boots. They stopped as his hand fell, and stared at him in surprise, as if they had expected the music to go on for ever.