dor
and lack of artificiality was a revelation to me. She placed her
disengaged hand upon my arm at the bottom of the steps.

"Uncle Zeb almost raised me," she explained, as we took our way around
the house towards the darkey cabins. "He's taken me to the fields with
him many a time, and I was brought up on that tune you hear him playing.
He always plays it when I come home--look at them now!"

The cabins were all built in a locust grove to the rear of the house.
To-night the negroes had lighted a bonfire, and were making merry in the
old-time, ante-bellum way. Seated upon broken-down chairs, or strewn
upon the grass in various attitudes, these dusky children of misfortune
watched the performance of an exceedingly black old uncle, who, sitting
upon a bench before his cabin, was picking the strings of a banjo almost
as old as himself. His bald head, surrounded by a fringe of gray wool,
shone brightly in the firelight, he was rocking his body rhythmically
backwards and forwards, and keeping time with one foot upon the hard
earth. As we came into the circle of firelight we were discovered, and
there was a quick movement, and a deferential giving way. My companion
took her hand from my arm, and the action seemed to draw me much nearer
the earth than I had been for the past two or three minutes. The
musician stopped playing when he became aware of our presence.

"Bress de Lawd, honey chile! Am dat you? 'Pears to me a' angel mus' 'a'
drapped down frum de sky!"

"This is your little child, Uncle Zeb," she answered with feeling, "and
I have come out here to listen to you play."

"De ol' man can't play 'less de feet's a-goin'," he replied, shaking his
head solemnly. "You know you's al'ays danced fur ol' Zeb."

A darker color came to her cheeks, and she turned smilingly to me.

"Uncle Zeb taught me a jig when I was a wee thing in pinafores. He will
never play for me unless I dance for him. You know he thinks I am still
a child of eight or ten. If you think it's not--real nice, I won't ask
you to stay."

The roguish upcasting of starry eyes, and the deprecating little manner,
tied my tongue for the instant.

"I shall be glad to stay, if you will permit me."

This much I managed to utter, and as she bowed assent, I went and leaned
against the cabin wall, by the side of Uncle Zeb. This was done partly
to give her all the room she needed, and partly to secure a support for
myself, for a strange weakness had begun to assail