ies march away.

Aunt Deb was also a soul of decision. She called out, "No more of these
sad tones," and struck up "The Year of Jubilo," and we all shouted till
the walls shook with the exultant words:

Ol' massa run--ha-ha!
De darkies stay,--ho-ho!
It must be now is the kingdom a-comin'
In the year of Jubilo.

At this point the fire suggested an old English ballad which I loved,
and so I piped up, "Mother, sing, 'Pile the Wood on Higher!'" and she
complied with pleasure, for this was a song of home, of the unbroken
fireside circle.

Oh, the winds howl mad outdoors
The snow clouds hurry past,
The giant trees sway to and fro
Beneath the sweeping blast.

and we children joined in the chorus:

Then we'll gather round the fire
And we'll pile the wood on higher,
Let the song and jest go round;
What care we for the storm,
When the fireside is so warm,
And pleasure here is found?

Never before did this song mean so much to me as at this moment when the
winds were actually howling outdoors, and Uncle Frank was in very truth
piling the logs higher. It seemed as though my stuffed bosom could not
receive anything deeper and finer, but it did, for father was saying,
"Well, Dave, now for some _tunes_."

This was the best part of David to me. He could make any room mystical
with the magic of his bow. True, his pieces were mainly venerable dance
tunes, cotillions, hornpipes,--melodies which had passed from fiddler to
fiddler until they had become veritable folk-songs,--pieces like "Money
Musk," "Honest John," "Haste to the Wedding," and many others whose
names I have forgotten, but with a gift of putting into even the
simplest song an emotion which subdued us and silenced us, he played on,
absorbed and intent. From these familiar pieces he passed to others for
which he had no names, melodies strangely sweet and sad, full of longing
cries, voicing something which I dimly felt but could not understand.

At the moment he was the somber Scotch Highlander, the true Celt, and as
he bent above his instrument his black eyes glowing, his fine head
drooping low, my heart bowed down in worship of his skill. He was my
hero, the handsomest, most romantic figure in all my world.

He played, "Maggie, Air Ye Sleepin," and the wind outside went to my
soul. Voices wailed to me out of the illimitable hill-land forests,
voices that pleaded:

Oh, let me in, for loud