heard Chad’s voice, and flew at him, jumping up and pawing him affectionately and licking his face while Chad hugged him and talked to him as though he were human and a brother; never before had the two been separated for a day.  So, while the master helped Rube at the barn and Chad helped Dolph at the wood-pile, Jack hung about his master—­tired and hungry as he was and much as he wanted to be by the fire or waiting in the kitchen for a sly bit from Melissa, whom he knew at once as the best of his new friends.

After supper, Dolph got out his banjo and played “Shady Grove,” and “Blind Coon Dog,” and “Sugar Hill,” and “Gamblin’ Man,” while Chad’s eyes glistened and his feet shuffled under his chair.  And when Dolph put the rude thing down on the bed and went into the kitchen, Chad edged toward it and, while old Joel was bragging about Jack to the school-master, he took hold of it with trembling fingers and touched the strings timidly.  Then he looked around cautiously:  nobody was paying any attention to him and he took it up into his lap and began to pick, ever so softly.  Nobody saw him but Melissa, who slipped quietly to the back of the room and drew near him.  Softly and swiftly Chad’s fingers worked and Melissa could scarcely hear the sound of the banjo under her father’s loud voice, but she could make out that he was playing a tune that still vibrates unceasingly from the Pennsylvania border to the pine-covered hills of Georgia—­ “Sourwood Mountain.”  Melissa held her breath while she listened—­Dolph could not play like that—­and by and by she slipped quietly to her father and pulled his sleeve and pointed to Chad.  Old Joel stopped talking, but Chad never noticed; his head was bent over the neck of the banjo, his body was swaying rhythmically, his chubby fingers were going like lightning, and his eyes were closed—­the boy was fairly lost to the world.  The tune came out in the sudden silence, clean-cut and swinging;

Heh — o — dee — um — dee — eedle — dahdee — deet

rang the strings and old Joel’s eyes danced.

“Sing it, boy!” he roared, “sing it!” And Chad sprang from the bed, on fire with confusion and twisting his fingers helplessly.  He looked almost frightened when Dolph ran back into the room and cried: 

“Who was that a-pickin’ that banjer?”

It was not often that Dolph showed such excitement, but he had good cause, and, when he saw Chad standing, shamefaced and bashful, in the middle of the floor, and Melissa joyously pointing her finger at him, he caught up the banjo from the bed and put it into the boy’s hands.  “Here, you just play that tune agin!”