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Show 123 Actually, he was more afraid of being maimed-of having his tongue s l i t , or a needle thrust down one ear, or a foot chopped o f f , or an eye carefully pulled out. He had been too young for the Great War but he had seen an older brother come back from France brutally maimed, and had never looked directly at that brother since. He was sorry now he had been a scoffer. He t r i e d to look pathetic, hoping that lunatics were clear-headed enough to find snivellers not worth maiming. The young man s t i r r e d himself and sat up. He shrugged his shoulders as though stretching cold muscles, flexed the fingers of his right hand and raised the mouthpiece to his l i p s . Veins stood out on his forehead as he began to play the same melody over again, and Lorin's great-uncle relaxed with the certainty of t h i r t y - s i x bars of wholeness. Thoughts of escape did occur to him, but the window was locked (neighborhood urchins loved to torment him by dropping firecrackers through i t) and the lunatic sat between him and the door, his brows beetled in profile over his vagrant melody that l i f t e d , f e l l , curled back on i t s e l f , wept and smiled again. Once again there was the series of leaps that landed grotesquely just past where you expected them to land. Once again there was the climb and the f a i l u r e to reach the summit, once again the sudden descending r i p p l e , the querulous s h i f t of tonal center, and the resolution. A much briefer pause followed this time, during which fine needles danced over the length of Lorin's great-uncle's body and the stranger opened the spit valve, from which nothing dropped, and shook his horn. Placing it to his white l i p s he once again played the strange melody, slowly, patiently, and deliberately at f i r s t , missing for the t h i r d time the high note and from that point on speeding his tempo, as though he were bored with the whole thing and wanted to be through. The last two phrases were sloppy |