94

Kagi was large, almost portly, with black beard, weather-exposed, and long black hair. Stevens was not so tall but more symmetrical and powerful, with military shoulders, straight, clean-made hands, a head poised in conscious strength of animal life, a skin soft as a woman's, dark-brown hair, beard over all his jaws, and hazel eyes which were both contumacious and keen.

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'Did 'Pop Smith buy the dark fellow I passed at the gate?" Lloyd asked.

"Traded for him," Stevens replied.

"Give 'em a little something-to boot," put in Kagi, shaking off his heaviness.

Both men laughed.

"Well," said Lloyd, "that was my idea of Father Smith, that he was kind to people. That's why I can't understand his way of treating me to-night."

"Have you got any slaves to trade him?" asked Kagi, with in

terest.

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None I can control; mine won't come into my possession for more than a year."

"Quantrell," said Stevens, "Mr. Smith is about moving from the farm. You got here just as everything was packed. That's why you see so many people around; moving a neighbor, you know."

"Why, that's just it," exclaimed the young stranger, throwing away all offense. "Let's go up and make him apologize." "No," said Stevens, "he's peculiar. Go up and bid him goodnight-unless he makes you stay."

"Can't stay," laughed Lloyd, gayly; “I'm just in love to-day, and going to ask my governor's consent, by to-night's train.”

They found comparatively few persons now at the dwelling, which was a miserable home for a man with six slaves-a long hut, half buried in the hill, so that there was a mere cellar under its high, rickety porch, and a small story and loft above. A candle assisted to reveal thus much, and boxes, trunks, and cheap valises, recently packed or emptied, were seen within this cellar. Not far behind the house the small pines grew dense and black, and clouds were hurrying in the sky as the winds rose and whistled.

"Is it correct, gentlemen?" asked Isaac Smith. "Fuddled," said Stevens.

"Mysterious," said Kagi.

"Who is that young person making free with my girl's accordion?" spoke up Quantrell, hearing the instrument awkwardly played.

"That's Captain Cook," answered Isaac Smith. "He's quite a cultivated person and a teacher."

CHAPTER XI.

KATY'S ACCORDION.

A SMALL, stooping, light-haired lad came out with the accordion and looked at Lloyd through pale-blue eyes, which seemed to feel his accomplishments.

Lloyd took Katy's gift and put his fingers to the keys.

A little culture, if learned in engine-houses and partisan clubs, helps many a man through life.

Something about these people seemed still suspectful and forbidding. Quantrell had tried his temperament upon them in vain, and now he had only some rude tunes to lull them with.

He began to play "Home, Sweet Home."

After a few strains, other persons seemed to come in, as if from the barns and corn-cribs and pine thickets. At first sullen, next wondering, and soon affected tenderly, they lay in blankets upon the autumn earth, or stood around in curious groups, while he played the air that the simple and the cot-bred of the British races know everywhere.

Some of the people who ventured near were negroes, strangelooking negroes for Maryland or for the American States anywhere -so wanting in politeness or even hospitality; preoccupied, too, as if with the morrow's house-moving occupations; but these soon felt the infection of the tender tune, and one young, handsome white boy came up and sat by Lloyd upon an old hair-trunk and listening, filled with tears at his bright eyes. Lloyd sang the words in his own melodious voice :

"An exile from home, pleasure dazzles in vain,
Ah! give me my lowly thatched cottage again;
The birds singing sweetly that came to my call,

Give them back, and my peace of mind, dearer than all.”

As the song finished, a sob was heard at Quantrell's elbow. Wat

son Smith came up and said to the young man sitting there:

"I've got people in Iowa and my own land there."

Isabel," was the answer, in a broken tone.

"Play something, Mr. Quantrell," spoke Isaac Smith, "which will remind us of the Sabbath and the heavenly rest; for here we have no abiding-place."

A camp-meeting tune, the favorite of his deceased mother, came to Quantrell's memory and art, and in the cool mountain air these simple strains ascended:

"I'm a pilgrim and I'm a stranger; I can tarry, I can tarry but a night;

Do not detain me, for I am going to where the streamlets are ever

flowing;

I'm a pilgrim and I'm a stranger-I can tarry, I can tarry but a night!

"There the sunbeams are ever shining, and I'm longing, I am longing for the sight;

Within a country unknown and dreary, I have been wandering for

lorn and weary;

I'm a pilgrim and I'm a stranger—I can tarry, I can tarry but a night.

"Of that country to which I'm going, my Redeemer, my Redeemer is the Light!

There is no sorrow nor any sighing, nor any sin there, nor any dying; I'm a pilgrim and I'm a stranger-I can tarry, I can tarry but a night!”

During this singing a torch had been procured, which showed all the faces, even to the outer parts of the humble circle. There seemed to be at least twenty men present, and not a single woman. Of Smith's own sons there were manifestly three, resembling each other even in their differences; and two young men, addressed as Thompson, of very pleasing countenances, Lloyd found to be old Mr. Smith's sons-in-law. One of these, of a most cordial face and manly figure, was looking at the stranger as he finished the last tune, and Quantrell spoke up:

"Now, William-I heard friend Watson say 'Isabel' just now. That's your sister, I reckon?”

"You're right, sir," the young man exclaimed; "my sister's married to him, and his sister Ruth's married to my brother."

“Well, now, in honor of that union I'll play you one more tune before I say 'Good-night.'

Lloyd found in his mind the measure and the words, and other voices joined in as he proceeded, till the last stanza pealed on the mountain night in trembling tones the player never forgot:

"My country! 'tis of thee,
Sweet land of Liberty,

Of thee I sing;

Land where my fathers died,
Land of the Pilgrim's pride,
From every mountain-side
Let Freedom ring!

"Let music swell the breeze,
And ring from all the trees
Sweet Freedom's song!

Let mortal tongues awake,
Let all that breathe partake,

Let rocks their silence break,

The sound prolong!"

Whites sang it; blacks seemed singing, too; but it was not, to Lloyd's idea, a tune for blacks, though they might hear it.

At the resounding end, where “ God, the author of Liberty," is appealed to, to keep us "in Freedom's holy light," and "protect us by his might," Isaac Smith made all rise.

"We will pray in the spirit of that hymn," he said, "and send each other on his way with God's blessing!"

Lloyd looked around, and the words of the prayer impressed him less than the manner of the listeners.

Stevens and Kagi were looking at Lloyd. Cook was stooping by the accordion as if he meditated a tune after the prayer which would put Lloyd's performances out of praise; nearly all the rest, whites and blacks, were standing or leaning with the expressions of people at a funeral where the dead was being re-hearsed by the preacher. Some had hands over their eyes; others with eyes closed seemed muttering responses; a few knelt on the ground and bowed low.

The imperfect light of torch and stars and fiery clouds showed chiefly the Mosaic old man in the midst, surrounded by his sons and sons-in-law, plainly praying, without the least excitement, in the practical tones he might have used to order his farm-work to be done. The words would have seemed full of feeling if the manner had not been so orderly and precise, and Lloyd remarked to himself:

"Pop Smith isn't the actor he was on the mountain yesterday. What can these people be so much interested for?"

He heard himself alluded to, toward the last, as "the young friend who, taking our hearts by music to home, admonishes us of them whose hearts and homes are never recognized. Those dear tunes of home, country, and heaven must be our only drum and fife, Lord! -as here we tarry but a night."

A sob seemed to go around somewhere in the dark, and there were sounds as of negroes in convulsive prayer. Seeking to separate these mystic noises, Quantrell felt his hand grasped by long, bony fingers, and as if still praying, Isaac Smith was talking to him:

"Go, young man! The Lord bless you for the music you have brought and the pious mother, perhaps, who taught you tunes so comforting to these poor people! Keep off the streets! Don't expose yourself! Don't stand on the corners, particularly!-Captain Cook, go with him past the limits."

"I must be getting a reputation all over Maryland," Lloyd thought, "for standing at the street corners in Baltimore. My governor lectured me about it when he sent me off gunning. Well, now I am in love I shall stop loafing."

"Will you take the accordion along, Quantrell?" said Captain Cook, looking at it wistfully.

"I would like to leave my accordion here and my dog Fritz," Lloyd replied, looking around upon the people, who still watched him curiously; "but, if you are going to move, they won't be safe.”

"Oh," said Stevens, “Mr. Smith is only going to move to his other house, across the road yonder."

Following the gesture, Lloyd saw a light a good way off, moving at some windows.

"Is this the dog?" old Isaac Smith asked, bringing Fritz forward. To Lloyd's admiration that sturdy mastiff made no resistance as Smith tied him fast to the railing of the little porch above.

"Copeland-Green," Smith spoke to two of the negroes, "put