After his father and brothers were gone, Eugene got Louis's fiddle out of the chimney-cupboard and fell to playing with an imperfect touch, picking out a tune slowly, with halts between the strains, as if he spelled a word with stammering syllables.

Eugene's musical expression was in his throat alone; his fingers were almost powerless to bring out the meaning of sweet sounds.

A drunken crew on a rolling vessel might have danced to the tune that Eugene Hautville fingered on his brother's fiddle that morning while his sister walked back and forth overhead, running the gantlet, as it were, of an agony which his masculine imagination could not compass, well tutored as it was by the lessons of his Shakespeare book.
When Margaret Bean came to the door the second time she heard the squeak of the fiddle, and clanged the knocker loud to overcome it.
Madelon and Eugene reached the door at the same time, and Margaret Bean extended another letter.

"Here's another," said she, shortly, to Madelon.

She tucked the hand which had held the letter under her shawl and hugged herself with a shiver, ostentatiously.