the
middle of the room he was not altogether ludicrous. His rusty trousers
were bagged at the knee, and his red woolen stockings showed between the
tops of his moccasins and his pantaloon-legs; and his coat, utterly
characterless as to color and cut, added to the stoop in his shoulders,
and yet there was a rude sort of grace and a certain dignity about his
bearing which kept down laughter. They were to have a square dance of
the old-fashioned sort.

"_Farrm_ on," he cried, and the fiddler struck out the first note of the
Virginia Reel. Daddy led out Rose, and the dance began. He straightened
up till his tall form towered above the rest of the boys like a
weather-beaten pine-tree, as he balanced and swung and led and called
off the changes with a voice full of imperious command.

The fiddler took a malicious delight toward the last in quickening the
time of the good old dance, and that put the old man on his mettle.

"Go it, ye young rascal!" he yelled. He danced like a boy and yelled
like a demon, catching a laggard here and there, and hurling them into
place like tops, while he kicked and stamped, wound in and out and waved
his hands in the air with a gesture which must have dated back to the
days of Washington. At last, flushed, breathless, but triumphant, he
danced a final break-down to the tune of "Leather Breeches," to show he
was unsubdued.

IV.

But these rare days passed away. As the country grew older it lost the
wholesome simplicity of pioneer days, and Daddy got a chance to play but
seldom. He no longer pleased the boys and girls--his music was too
monotonous and too simple. He felt this very deeply. Once in a while he
broke out to some of the old neighbors in protest against the changes.

"The boys I used to trot on m' knee are gittin' too high-toned. They
wouldn't be found dead with old Deering, and then the preachers are
gittin' thick, and howlin' agin dancin', and the country's filling up
with Dutchmen, so't I'm left out."

As a matter of fact, there were few homes now where Daddy could sit on
the table, in his ragged vest and rusty pantaloons, and play "Honest
John," while the boys thumped about the floor. There were few homes
where the old man was even a welcome visitor, and he felt this rejection
keenly. The women got tired of seeing him about, because of his
uncleanly habits of spitting and his tiresome stories. Many of the old
neighbors had died or moved away, and the young people ha