8 The Musicker
About the middle of the forenoon they began to go up a long hill. By-and-by this hill suddenly dropped down into a pretty valley, where the travelers saw, to their surprise, a small house standing by the road-side.
It was the first house they had seen, and they hastened into the valley to discover who lived there. No one was in sight as they approached, but when they began to get nearer the house they heard queer sounds coming from it. They could not make these out at first, but as they became louder our friends thought they heard a sort of music like that made by a wheezy hand-organ; the music fell upon their ears in this way:
Tiddle-widdle-iddle oom pom-pom!
Oom, pom-pom! oom, pom-pom!
Tiddle-tiddle-tiddle oom pom-pom!
Oom, pom-pom—pah!
"What is it, a band or a
