Produced by Al Haines
1894
Marie was tired. She had been walking nearly the whole day, and nowthe sun was low in the west, and long level rays of yellow light werespreading over the country, striking the windows of a farmhouse hereand there into sudden flame, or resting more softly on tree-tops andhanging slopes. They were like fiddle-bows, Marie thought; and at thethought she held closer something that she carried in her arms, andmurmured over it a little, as a mother coos over her baby. It seemed along time since she had run away from the troupe: she would forgetall about them soon, she thought, and their ugly faces. She shiveredslightly as she recalled the face of "Le Boss" as it was last bent uponher, frowning and dark, and as ugly as a hundred devils, she was quitesure. Ah, he would take away her violin—Le Boss! he would give it tohis own girl, whom she, Marie, had taught till she could play a verylittle, enough to keep the birds from flying away when they saw her, asthey otherwise might; she was to have the violin, the Lady, one's ownheart and life, and Marie was to have a fiddle that he had picked upanywhere, found on an ash-heap, most likely! Ah, and now he had lostthe Lady and Marie too, and who would play for him this evening, anddraw the children out of the houses? he! let some one tell Mariethat! It had not been hard, the running away, for no one would everhave thought of Marie's daring to do such a thing. She belonged to LeBoss, as much as the tent or the ponies, or his own ugly girl: so theyall thought in the troupe, and so Marie herself had thought till thatday; that is, she had not thought at all. While she could play all thetime, and had often quite enough to eat, and always something, a pieceof bread in the hand if no more,—and La Patronne, Le Boss's wife,never too unkind, and sometimes even giving her a bit of ribbon for theLady's neck when there was to be a special performance,—why, who wouldhave thought of running away? she had been with them so long, thoseothers, and that time in France was so long ago,—hundreds of years ago!
So no one had thought of noticing when she dropped behind to tune herviolin and practise by herself; it was a thing she did every day, theyall knew, for she could not practise when the children pulled her gownall the time, and wanted to dance. She had chosen the place well,having been on the lookout for it all day, ever since Le Boss told herwhat he meant to do,—that infamy which the good God would never haveallowed, if He had not been perhaps tired with the many infamies of LeBoss, and forgotten to notice this one. She had chosen the place well!A little wood dipped down to the right, with a brook running beyond,and across the brook a sudden sharp rise, crowned with a thick growthof birches. She had played steadily as she passed through the wood andover the stream, and only ceased when she gained the brow of the hilland spra