other fiddlers in the vicinity.  Indeed, he could rarely get away from a great house without a sample of his powers in this direction, and then blending with the rhythmical cadence of feet, the rustle of garments, would be evoked ripples of mirth and bursts of laughter that were echoed back from the dim pine-groves without.  Finally, when with his great foot beating time on the floor and every muscle of his body in motion, he ended with an original arrangement of “Dixie,” the eyes of the gentlest maiden would flash as she joined the chorus of the men in gray, who were scarcely less excited for the moment than they would have been in a headlong cavalry charge.

These were moments of glory for Jeff.  In fact, on all similar occasions he had a consciousness of his power; he made the slave forget his bondage, the poor whites their poverty, maidens the absence of their fathers, brothers, and lovers, and the soldier the chances against his return.

At last there came a summer day when other music than that of Jeff’s fiddle resounded through that region.  Two armies met and grappled through the long sultry hours.  Every moment death wounds were given and received, for thick as insects in woods, grove, and thicket, bullets whizzed on their fatal mission; while from every eminence the demoniacal shells shrieked in exultation over the havoc they wrought.

Jeff’s home was on the edge of the battlefield, and as he trembled in the darkest corner of the cellar, he thought, “Dis yer beats all de thunder-gusts I eber heered crack, run togedder in one big hurricane.”

With the night came silence, except as it was broken by the groans and cries of wounded men; and later the contending forces departed, having accorded to the fallen such poor burial as was given them when life was cheap and death the chief harvester in Virginia.

For a day or two Jeff’s conscience was active, and the memory of the resolutions inspired by the din of war gave to his thin visage a preternatural seriousness.  Dishes were washed in such brief time and so thoroughly, and such havoc made in the garden-weeds that the world might make a note of Jeff’s idea of reform (to its advantage).  In the evening his fiddle wailed out psalm-tunes to the entire exclusion of its former carnal strains.

It must be admitted, however, that Jeff’s grace was like the early dew.  On the third evening, “Ole Dan Tucker” slipped in among the hymns, and these were played in a time scarcely befitting their character.  Then came a bit of news that awakened a wholly different train of thought and desire.  A colored boy, more venturous than himself, was said to have picked up some “Linkum” money on the battlefield.  This information shed on the wild wooded tract where the war trumpet had raged the most fiercely a light more golden than that of the moon then at its full; and Jeff resolved that with the coming night he also would explore a region which, nevertheless, had nameless terrors for him.