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ad seen Tonald dance before, but this was different, for it was not Tonald McKenzie alone who danced before them, but the incarnate spirit of the Highlands, the unconquerable, dauntless, lawless Highlands, with its purple hills and treacherous caverns that fling defiance at the world and fear not man nor devil. Tonald finished with a leap as nimble as that with which a cat springs on its victim while the company watched spellbound. He slipped away into a corner and would dance no more that night. When twelve o'clock came, the dancing was over, and with the smell of coffee and the rattle of dishes in the kitchen it was not hard to persuade big John Kennedy to sing. Big John lived alone in a little shanty in the hills, and the prospect of a good square meal was a pleasant one to the lonely fellow who had been his own cook so long. Big John lived among the Crofters, whose methods of cooking were simple in the extreme, and from them he had picked up strange ways of housekeeping. He ate out of the frying pan; he milked the cow in the porridge pot, and only took what he needed for each meal, reasoning that she had a better way of keeping it than he had. Big John had departed almost entirely from "white man's ways," and lived a wild life free from the demands of society. His ability to "call off" at dances was the one tie that bound him to the Canadian people on the plain. "Oh, I can't sing," John said sheepishly, when they urged him. "Tell us how it happened any way John," Bud Perkins said. "Give us the story of it." "Go on John. Sing about the cowboy," Peter Slater coaxed. "It iss a teffle of a good song, that," chuckled Tonald. "Well," John began, clearing his throat, "here it's for you. I've ruined me voice drivin' oxen though, but here's the song." It was a song of the plains, weird and wistful, with an uncouth plaintiveness that fascinated these lonely hill-dwellers. As I was a-walkin' one beautiful morning, As I was a-walkin' one morning in May, I saw a poor cowboy rolled up in his blanket, Rolled up in his blanket as cold as the clay! The listener would naturally suppose that the cowboy was dead in his blanket that lovely May morning; but that idea had to be abandoned as the song went on, because the cowboy was very much alive in the succeeding verses, when-- Round the bar bummin' where bullets were hummin' He snuffed out the candle to show why he come! Then his
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