How many a time she had
heard her husband play it on the homely fiddle made by himself from
birch and cherry-wood! how many a time she had seen it danced on the
floor of their one room, to the patter of wooden clogs and the rustle
of homespun petticoat! how many a time she had danced it herself!--and
did she not remember once, as they joined clasps for right-hands-round,
how it had lent its gay, bright measure to her life? And here she was
singing it alone, in the forest, at midnight, to a wild beast! As she
sent her voice trilling up and down its quick oscillations between joy
and pain, the creature who grasped her uncurled his paw and scratched
the bark from the bough; she must vary the spell; and her voice spun
leaping along the projecting points of tune of a hornpipe. Still
singing, she felt herself twisted about with a low growl and a lifting
of the red lip from the glittering teeth; she broke the hornpipe's
thread, and commenced unravelling a lighter, livelier thing, an Irish
jig. Up and down and round about her voice flew, the beast threw back
his head so that the diabolical face fronted hers, and the torrent of
his breath prepared her for his feast as the anaconda slimes his prey.
Franticly she darted from tune to tune; his restless movements followed
her.
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