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"Scrape a hawg with them, sir? What did y' s'pose, you numbskull?"
"Well, I never saw anything"----

"You'll have a chance mighty quick, sir. Grab ahold, sir! Swing 'im
around--there! Now easy, easy! Now, then, one, two; one, two--that's
right."

While he dipped the porker in the water, pulling with his companion
rhythmically upon the hook, he talked incessantly, mixing up scraps of
stories and boastings of what he could do, with commands of what he
wanted the other man to do.

"The best man I ever worked with. _Now turn 'im, turn 'im!_" he yelled,
reaching over Jennings' wrist. "Grab under my wrist. There! won't ye
never learn how to turn a hawg? _Now, out with 'im!_" was his next wild
yell, as the steaming hog was jerked out of the water upon the planking.
"Now try the hair on them ears! Beautiful scald," he said, clutching his
hand full of bristles and beaming with pride. "Never see anything finer.
Here, Bub, a pail of hot water, quick! Try one of them candlesticks!
They ain't no better scraper than the bottom of an old iron candlestick;
no, sir! Dum your new-fangled scrapers! I made a bet once with old Jake
Ridgeway that I could scrape the hair off'n two hawgs, by gum, quicker'n
he could one. Jake was blowin' about a new scraper he had ...

"Yes, yes, yes, dump it right into the barrel. Condemmit! Ain't you got
no gumption?... So Sim Smith, he held the watch. Sim was a mighty good
hand t'work with; he was about the only man I ever sawed with who didn't
ride the saw. He could jerk a cross-cut saw.... Now let him in again,
now; _he-ho_, once again! _Roll him over now_; that foreleg needs a tech
o' water. Now out with him again; that's right, that's right! By gol, a
beautiful scald as ever I see!"

Milton, standing near, caught his eye again. "Clean that ear, sir! What
the devil you standin' there for?" He returned to his story after a
pause. "A--n--d Jake he scraped away--_Hyare_," he shouted, suddenly,
"don't ruggle the skin like that! Can't you see the way I do it? Leave
it smooth as a baby, sir--yessir!"

He worked on in this way all day, talking unceasingly, never shirking a
hard job, and scarcely showing fatigue at any moment.

"I'm short o' breath a leetle, that's all; never git tired, but my wind
gives out. Dum cold got on me, too."

He ate a huge supper of liver and potatoes, still working away hard at
an ancient horse-trade, and when he drove off at night, he had not yet
finished a single one of the dozen stories he had begun.

III.

But pitching grain and hog-killing were on the lower levels of his art,
for above all else Daddy loved to be called upon to play the fiddle for
dances. He "officiated" for the first time at a dance given by one of
the younger McTurgs. They were all fiddlers themselves--had been for
three generations--but they seized the opportunity of helping Daddy and
at the same time of relieving themselves of the trouble of furnishing
the music while the rest danced.

Milton attended this dance, and saw Daddy for the first time earning his
money pleasantly. From that time on the associations around his
personality were less severe, and they came to like him better. He came
early, with his old fiddle in a time-worn white-pine box. His hair was
neatly combed to the top of his long, narrow head, and his face was very
clean. The boys all greeted him with great pleasure, and asked him where
he would sit.

"Eight on that table, sir; put a chair up there."

He took his chair on the kitchen-table as if it were a throne. He wore
huge moccasins of moose-hide on his feet, and for special occasions like
this added a paper collar to his red woolen shirt. He took off his coat
and laid it across his chair for a cushion. It was all very funny to the
young people, but they obeyed him laughingly, and while they "formed
on," he sawed his violin and coaxed it up to concert pitch, and twanged
it and banged it into proper tunefulness.

"A-a-a-ll-ready there!" he rasped out, with prodigious force. "Everybody
git into his place!" Then, lifting one huge foot, he put the fiddle
under his chin, and, raising his bow till his knuckles touched the
strings, he yelled, "Already, G'LANG!" and brought his foot down with a
startling bang on the first note. _Rye doodle doo, doodle doo._

As he went on and the dancers fell into rhythm, the clatter of heavy
boots seemed to thrill him with old-time memories, and he kept
boisterous time with his foot while his high, rasping nasal rang high
above the confusion of tongues and heels and swaying forms.

"_Ladies_' gran' change! FOUR hands round! _Bal_-ance all! _Elly_-man
left! Back to play-cis."

His eyes closed in a sort of intoxication of pleasure, but he saw all
that went on in some miraculous way.

"_First_ lady lead to the right--_toodle rum rum! Gent_ foller after
(step along thar)! Four hands round"----

The boys were immensely pleased with him. They delighted in his antics
rather than in his tunes, which were exceedingly few and simple. They
seemed never to be able to get enough of one tune which he called
"Honest John," and which he played in his own way, accompanied by a
chant which he meant, without doubt, to be musical.

"HON-ers tew your pardners--_tee teedle deedle dee dee dee dee!_ Stand
up straight an' put on your style! _Right_ an' left four"----

The hat was passed by the floor-manager during the evening, and Daddy
got nearly three dollars, which delighted Milton very much.

At supper he insisted on his prerogative, which was to take the
prettiest girl out to supper.

"Look-a-here, Daddy, ain't that crowdin' the mourners?" objected the
others.

"What do you mean by that, sir? No, sir! Always done it, in Michigan and
Yark State both; yes, sir."

He put on his coat ceremoniously, while the tittering girls stood about
the room waiting. He did not delay. His keen eyes had made selection
long before, and, approaching Rose Watson with old-fashioned, elaborate
gallantry, he said: "_May_ I have the pleasure?" and marched out
triumphantly, amidst shouts of laughter.

His shrill laugh rang high above the rest at the table, as he said: "I'm
the youngest man in this crowd, sir! Demmit, I bet a hat I c'n dance
down any man in this crowd; yes, sir. The old man can do it yet."

They all took sides in order to please him.

"I'll bet he can," said Hugh McTurg; "I'll bet a dollar on Daddy."

"I'll take the bet," said Joe Randall, and with great noise the match
was arranged to come the first thing after supper.

"All right, sir; any time, sir. I'll let you know the old man is on
earth yet."

While the girls were putting away the supper dishes, the young man lured
Daddy out into the yard for a wrestling-match, but some of the others
objected.

"Oh, now, that won't do! If Daddy was a young man"----

"What do you mean, sir? I am young enough for you, sir. Just let me get
ahold o' you, sir, and I'll show you, you young rascal! you dem
jackanapes!" he ended, almost shrieking with rage, as he shook his fist
in the face of his grinning tormentors.

The others held him back with much apparent alarm, and ordered the other
fellows away.

"There, there, Daddy, I wouldn't mind him! I wouldn't dirty my hands on
him; he ain't worth it. Just come inside, and we'll have that
dancing-match now."

Daddy reluctantly returned to the house, and, having surrendered his
violin to Hugh McTurg, was ready for the contest. As he stepped into 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 had gone West or
to the cities. Men began to pity him rather than laugh at him, which
hurt him more than their ridicule. They began to favor him at threshing
or at the fall hog-killing.

"Oh, you're getting old, Daddy; you'll have to give up this heavy work.
Of course, if you feel able to do it, why, all right! Like to have you
do it, but I guess we'll have to have a man to do the heavy lifting, I
s'pose."

"I s'pose not, sir! I am jest as able to yank a hawg as ever, sir; yes,
sir, demmit--demmit! Do you think I've got one foot in the grave?"

Nevertheless, Daddy often failed to come to time on appointed days, and
it was painful to hear him trying to explain, trying to make light of it
all.

"M' caugh wouldn't let me sleep last night. A gol-dum leetle, nasty,
ticklin' caugh, too; but it kept me awake, fact was, an'--well, m' wife,
she said I hadn't better come. But don't you worry, sir; it won't happen
again, sir; no, sir."

His hands got stiffer year by year, and his simple tunes became
practically a series of squeaks and squalls. There came a time when the
fiddle was laid away almost altogether, for his left hand got caught in
the cog-wheels of the horse-power, and all four of the fingers on that
hand were crushed. Thereafter he could only twang a little on the
strings. It was not long after this that he struck his foot with the ax
and lamed himself for life.

As he lay groaning in bed, Mr. Jennings went in to see him and tried to
relieve the old man's feelings by telling him the number of times he had
practically cut his feet off, and said he knew it was a terrible hard
thing to put up with.

"Gol dummit, it ain't the pain," the old sufferer yelled, "it's the dum
awkwardness. I've chopped all my life; I can let an ax in up to the
maker's name, and hew to a hair-line; yes, sir! It was jest them dum new
mittens my wife made; they was s' slippery," he ended, with a groan.

As a matter of fact, the one accident hinged upon the other. It was the
failure of his left hand, with its useless fingers, to do its duty, that
brought the ax down upon his foot. The pain was not so much physical as
mental. To think that he, who could hew to a hair-line, right and left
hand, should cut his own foot like a ten-year-old boy--that scared him.
It brought age and decay close to him. For the first time in his life he
felt that he was fighting a losing battle.

A man like this lives so much in the flesh that when his limbs begin to
fail him, everything else seems slipping away. He had gloried in his
strength. He had exulted in the thrill of his life-blood and in the
swell of his vast muscles; he had clung to the idea that he was strong
as ever, till this last blow came upon him, and then he began to think
and to tremble.

When he was able to crawl about again, he was not the same man. He was
gloomy and morose, snapping and snarling at all that came near him, like
a wounded bear. He was alone a great deal of the time during the winter
following his hurt. Neighbors seldom went in, and for weeks he saw no
one but his hired hand, and the faithful, dumb little old woman, his
wife, who moved about without any apparent concern or sympathy for his
suffering. The hired hand, whenever he called upon the neighbors, or
whenever questions were asked, said that Daddy hung around over the
stove most of the time, paying no attention to any one or anything. "He
ain't dangerous 'tall," he said, meaning that Daddy was not dangerously
ill.

Milton rode out from school one winter day with Bill, the hand, and was
so much impressed with his story of Daddy's condition that he rode home
with him. He found the old man sitting bent above the stove, wrapped in
a quilt, shivering and muttering to himself. He hardly looked up when
Milton spoke to him, and seemed scarcely to comprehend what he said.

Milton was much alarmed at the terrible change, for the last time he had
seen him he had towered above him, laughingly threatening to "warm his
jacket," and now here he sat, a great hulk of flesh, his mind flickering
and flaring under every wind of suggestion, soon to go out altogether.

In reply to questions he only muttered with a trace of his old spirit:
"I'm all right. Jest as good a man as I ever was, only I'm cold. I'll be
all right when spring comes, so 't I c'n git outdoors. Somethin' to warm
me up, yessir; I'm cold, that's all."

The young fellow sat in awe before him, but the old wife and Bill moved
about the room, taking very little interest in what the old man said or
did. Bill at last took down the violin. "I'll wake him up," he said.
"This always fetches the old feller. Now watch 'im."

"Oh, don't do that!" Milton said, in horror. But Bill drew the bow
across the strings in the same way that Daddy always did when tuning up.

He lifted his head as Bill dashed into "Honest John," in spite of
Milton's protest. He trotted his feet after a little and drummed with
his hands on the arms of his chair, then smiled a little in a pitiful
way. Finally he reached out his right hand for the violin and took it
into his lap. He tried to hold the neck with his poor, old, mutilated
left hand and burst into tears.

"Don't you do that again, Bill," Milton said. "It's better for him to
forget that. Now you take the best care of him you can to-night. I don't
think he's going to live long; I think you ought to go for the doctor
right off."

"Oh, he's been like this for the last two weeks; he ain't sick, he's
jest old, that's all," replied Bill, brutally.

And the old lady, moving about without passion and without speech,
seemed to confirm this; and yet Milton was unable to get the picture of
the old man out of his mind. He went home with a great lump in his
throat.

* * * * *

The next morning, while they were at breakfast, Bill burst wildly into
the room.

"Come over there, all of you; we want you."

They all looked up much scared. "What's the matter, Bill?"

"Daddy's killed himself," said Bill, and turned to rush back, followed
by Mr. Jennings and Milton.

While on the way across the field Bill told how it all happened.

"He wouldn't go to bed, the old lady couldn't make him, and when I got
up this morning I didn't think nothin' about it. I s'posed, of course,
he'd gone to bed all right, but when I was going out to the barn I
stumbled across something in the snow, and I felt around, and there he
was. He got hold of my revolver someway. It was on the shelf by the
washstand, and I s'pose he went out there so't we wouldn't hear him."

"I dassn't touch him," he said, with a shiver; "and the old woman, she
jest slumped down in a chair an set there--wouldn't do a thing--so I
come over to see you."

Milton's heart swelled with remorse. He felt guilty because he had not
gone directly for the doctor. To think that the old sufferer had killed
himself was horrible and seemed impossible.

The wind was blowing the snow, cold and dry, across the yard, but the
sun shone brilliantly upon the figure in the snow as they came up to it.
There Daddy lay. The snow was in his scant hair and in the hollow of his
vast, half-naked chest. A pistol was in his hand, but there was no mark
upon him, and Milton's heart leaped with quick relief. It was delirium,
not suicide.

There was a sort of majesty in the figure half-buried in the snow. His
hands were clenched, and there was a frown of resolution on his face, as
if he had fancied Death coming and had gone defiantly forth to meet
him.

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PART IX.

THE SOCIABLE AT DUDLEY'S: DANCING THE "WEEVILY WHEAT."

"Good night, Lettie!"
"Goodnight, Ben!"
(The moon is sinking at the west.)
"Good night, my sweetheart." Once again
The parting kiss, while comrades wait
Impatient at the roadside gate,
And the red moon sinks beyond the west.

THE SOCIABLE AT DUDLEY'S.

I.

John Jennings was not one of those men who go to a donation party with
fifty cents' worth of potatoes and eat and carry away two dollars' worth
of turkey and jelly-cake. When he drove his team around to the front
door for Mrs. Jennings, he had a sack of flour and a quarter of a fine
fat beef in his sleigh and a five-dollar bill in his pocket-book, a
contribution to Elder Wheat's support.

Milton, his twenty-year-old son, was just driving out of the yard,
seated in a fine new cutter, drawn by a magnificent gray four-year-old
colt. He drew up as Mr. Jennings spoke.

"Now be sure and don't never leave him a minute untied. And see that the
harness is all right. Do you hear, Milton?"

"Yes, I hear!" answered the young fellow, rather impatiently, for he
thought himself old enough and big enough to look out for himself.

"Don't race, will y', Milton?" was his mother's anxious question from
the depth of her shawls.

"Not if I can help it," was his equivocal response as he chirruped to
Marc Antony. The grand brute made a rearing leap that brought a cry
from the mother and a laugh from the young driver, and swung into the
road at a flying pace. The night was clear and cold, the sleighing
excellent, and the boy's heart was full of exultation.

It was a joy just to control such a horse as he drew rein over that
night. Large, with the long, lithe body of a tiger and the broad, clear
limbs of an elk, the gray colt strode away up the road, his hoofs
flinging a shower of snow over the dasher. The lines were like steel
rods; the sleigh literally swung by them; the traces hung slack inside
the thills. The bells clashed out a swift clamor; the runners seemed to
hiss over the snow as the duck-breasted cutter swung round the curves
and softly rose and fell along the undulating road.

On either hand the snow stood billowed against the fences and amid the
wide fields of corn-stalks bleached in the wind. Over in the east, above
the line of timber skirting Cedar Creek, the vast, slightly gibbous moon
was rising, sending along the crusted snow a broad path of light. Other
sleighs could be heard through the still, cold air. Far away a party of
four or five were singing a chorus as they spun along the road.

Something sweet and unnamable was stirring in the young fellow's brain
as he spun along in the marvelously still and radiant night. He wished
Eileen were with him. The vast and cloudless blue vault of sky
glittered with stars, which even the radiant moon could not dim. Not a
breath of air was stirring save that made by the swift, strong stride of
the horse.

It was a night for youth and love and bells, and Milton felt this
consciously, and felt it by singing:

"Stars of the summer night,
Hide in your azure deeps,--
She sleeps--my lady sleeps."

He was on his way to get Bettie Moss, one of his old sweethearts, who
had become more deeply concerned with the life of Edwin Blackler. He had
taken the matter with sunny philosophy even before meeting Eileen
Deering at the Seminary, and he was now on his way to bring about peace
between Ed and Bettie, who had lately quarreled. Incidentally he
expected to enjoy the sleigh-ride.

"Stiddy, boy! Ho, boy! _Stiddy_, old fellow," he called soothingly to
Marc, as he neared the gate and whirled up to the door. A girl came to
the door as he drove up, her head wrapped in a white hood, a shawl on
her arms. She had been waiting for him.

"Hello, Milt. That you?"

"It's me. Been waiting?"

"I should say I had. Begun t' think you'd gone back on me. Everybody
else's gone."

"Well! Hop in here before you freeze; we'll not be the last ones there.
Yes, bring the shawl; you'll need it t' keep the snow off your face,"
he called, authoritatively.

"'Tain't snowin', is it?" she asked as she shut the door and came to the
sleigh's side.

"Clear as a bell," he said as he helped her in.

"Then where'll the snow come from?"

"From Marc's heels."

"Goodness sakes! you don't expect me t' ride after _that_ wild-headed
critter, do you?"

His answer was a chirp which sent Marc half-way to the gate before
Bettie could catch her breath. The reins stiffened in his hands. Bettie
clung to him, shrieking at every turn in the road. "Milton Jennings, if
you tip us over, I'll"----

Milton laughed, drew the colt down to a steady, swift stride, and Bettie
put her hands back under the robe.

"I wonder who that is ahead?" he asked after a few minutes, which
brought them in sound of bells.

"I guess it's Cy Hurd; it sounded like his bells when he went past. I
guess it's him and Bill an' Belle an' Cad Hines."

"Expect to see Ed there?" asked Milton after a little pause.

"I don't care whether I ever see him again or not," she snapped.

"Oh, yes, you do!" he answered, feeling somehow her insincerity.

"Well--I don't!"

Milton didn't care to push the peace-making any further. However, he had
curiosity enough to ask, "What upset things 'tween you 'n Ed?"

"Oh, nothing."

"You mean none o' my business?"

"I didn't say so."

"No, you didn't need to," he laughed, and she joined in.

"Yes, that's Cy Hurd. I know that laugh of his far's I c'n hear it,"
said Bottie as they jingled along. "I wonder who's with him?"

"We'll mighty soon see," said Milton, as he wound the lines around his
hands and braced his feet, giving a low whistle, which seemed to run
through the colt's blood like fire. His stride did not increase in rate,
but its reach grew majestic as he seemed to lengthen and lower. His
broad feet flung great disks of hard-packed snow over the dasher, and
under the clash of his bells the noise of the other team grew plainer.

"Get out of the way," sang Milton, as he approached the other team.
There was challenge and exultation in his tone.

"Hello! In a hurry?" shouted those in front, without increasing their
own pace.

"Ya-as, something of a hurry," drawled Milton in a disguised voice.

"Wa-al? Turn out an' go by if you are."

"No, thankee, I'll just let m' nag nibble the hay out o' your box an'
take it easy."

"Sure o' that?"

"You bet high I am." Milton nudged Bettie, who was laughing with
delight. "It's Bill an' his bays. He thinks there isn't a team in the
country can keep up with him. Get out o' the way there!" he shouted
again. "I'm in a hurry."

"Let 'em out! Let 'em out, Bill," they heard Cy say, and the bays sprang
forward along the level road, the bells ringing like mad, the snow
flying, the girls screaming at every lurch of the sleighs. But Marc's
head still shook haughtily above the end-gate; still the foam from his
lips fell upon the hay in the box ahead.

"Git out o' this! Yip!" yelled Bill to his bays, but Marc merely made a
lunging leap and tugged at the lines as if asking for more liberty.
Milton gave him his head and laughed to see the great limbs rise and
fall like the pistons of an engine. They swept over the weeds like a
hawk skimming the stubble of a wheat field.

"Get out o' the way or I'll run right over your back," yelled Milton
again.

"Try it," was the reply.

"Grab hold of me, Bettie, and lean to the right. When we turn this
corner I'm going to take the inside track and pass 'em."

"You'll tip us over"----

"No, I won't! Do as I tell you."

They were nearing a wide corner, where the road turned to the right and
bore due south through the woods. Milton caught sight of the turn, gave
a quick twist of the lines around his hands, leaned over the dasher and
spoke shrilly:

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