It was the same feeling which restrains any except fools or braggarts from wishing to sleep in "haunted" rooms, or to live in houses polluted with the memory of a revolting crime.

No sane mind believes in foolish apparitions, but fancy may at times bewitch the best of us.

So the Stradivarius was burnt.

It was, after all, perhaps not so serious a matter, for, as I have said, the bass-bar had given way.

There had always been a question whether it was strong enough to resist the strain of modern stringing.