alternative name be tin whistle?  I am grossly deceived if it be made of tin.  Lastly, in what deaf catacomb, in what earless desert, does the beginner pass the excruciating interval of his apprenticeship?  We have all heard people learning the piano, the fiddle, and the cornet; but the young of the penny whistler (like that of the salmon) is occult from observation; he is never heard until proficient; and providence (perhaps alarmed by the works of Mr Mallock) defends human hearing from his first attempts upon the upper octave.

A really noteworthy thing was taking place in a green lane, not far from Padwick.  On the bench of a carrier’s cart there sat a tow-headed, lanky, modest-looking youth; the reins were on his lap; the whip lay behind him in the interior of the cart; the horse proceeded without guidance or encouragement; the carrier (or the carrier’s man), rapt into a higher sphere than that of his daily occupations, his looks dwelling on the skies, devoted himself wholly to a brand-new D penny whistle, whence he diffidently endeavoured to elicit that pleasing melody ‘The Ploughboy’.  To any observant person who should have chanced to saunter in that lane, the hour would have been thrilling.  ‘Here at last,’ he would have said, ‘is the beginner.’

The tow-headed youth (whose name was Harker) had just encored himself for the nineteenth time, when he was struck into the extreme of confusion by the discovery that he was not alone.

‘There you have it!’ cried a manly voice from the side of the road.

‘That’s as good as I want to hear.  Perhaps a leetle oilier in the run,’ the voice suggested, with meditative gusto.  ‘Give it us again.’

Harker glanced, from the depths of his humiliation, at the speaker.  He beheld a powerful, sun-brown, clean-shaven fellow, about forty years of age, striding beside the cart with a non-commissioned military bearing, and (as he strode) spinning in the air a cane.  The fellow’s clothes were very bad, but he looked clean and self-reliant.

‘I’m only a beginner,’ gasped the blushing Harker, ’I didn’t think anybody could hear me.’

‘Well, I like that!’ returned the other.  ’You’re a pretty old beginner.  Come, I’ll give you a lead myself.  Give us a seat here beside you.’

The next moment the military gentleman was perched on the cart, pipe in hand.  He gave the instrument a knowing rattle on the shaft, mouthed it, appeared to commune for a moment with the muse, and dashed into ’The girl I left behind me’.  He was a great, rather than a fine, performer; he lacked the bird-like richness; he could scarce have extracted all the honey out of ‘Cherry Ripe’; he did not fear—­he even ostentatiously displayed and seemed to revel in he shrillness of the instrument; but in fire, speed, precision, evenness, and fluency; in linked agility of jimmy—­a technical expression, by your leave, answering to warblers on the bagpipe; and perhaps, above all, in that inspiring side-glance of the eye, with which he followed the effect and (as by a human appeal) eked out the insufficiency of his performance:  in these, the fellow stood without a rival.  Harker listened:  ‘The girl I left behind me’ filled him with despair; ‘The Soldier’s Joy’ carried him beyond jealousy into generous enthusiasm.