After supper all of us gathered on the front porch. Mr. and Mrs. Grundy occupied the settee; Salome and I sat upon the porch at the top of the steps, she leaning against one pillar, and I against the other, across from her. Of course she did the talking, and while most of it was about the things which had happened at school, I found myself listening with increasing interest. I[93] soon discovered that it was the music of her voice which held me,—soft, rich, speaking in perfect accents. Her narrative was frequently interrupted by bursts of bubbling laughter, as some amusing incident was remembered and related. Very suddenly she stopped.

[93]

"Listen!" she said, and turned her head sideways, holding up one finger.

Through the silence which followed came the twanging notes of a banjo.

"It's Uncle Zeb!" she announced, in a loud whisper. Then to me, impulsively, "Don't you like music, Mr. Stone?"

She leaned towards me, as though it was a vital question which she had propounded.

"Very dearly," I answered promptly. "This is the first that I have heard since coming here."

"It's a jig, and he's playing it for me—the old darling! I must go to him, or he would be hurt."

[94]She arose swiftly, and gathered up her skirts.

[94]

"Will you come, Mr. Stone, since you love music? We won't stay long."

I mumbled something, and got up, a trifle confused. Such perfect candor 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[95] 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 

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