"It was not made by a professional." "It was made in the cotton-field by a slave," observed old Berry sharply, yet with a content which overrode antipathy to his visitor.
Jethro put the fiddle to his chin, and drew the bow twice or thrice sweepingly across the strings.

Such a sound had never come from Berry's violin before.

It was the touch of a born musician who certainly had skill, but who had infinitely more of musical passion.
"Made by a slave in the cotton-fields!" Jethro said with a veiled look, and as though he was thinking of something else: "'Dordi', I'd like to meet a slave like that!" At the Romany exclamation Ingolby swept the man with a searching look.
He had heard the Romany wife of Ruliff Zaphe use the word many years ago when he and Charley Long visited the big white house on the hill.

Was the man a Romany, and, if so, what was he doing here?
Had it anything to do with Gabriel Druse and his daughter?
But no--what was there strange in the man being a Romany and playing the fiddle?
Here and there in the West during the last two years, he had seen what he took to be Romany faces.

He looked to see the effect of the stranger's remark on old Berry.
"I was a slave, and I was like that.