nces' arm to prime her for the treat.

"Watch his face," she whispered, smiling behind her hand.

Banjo struck the chords of his accompaniment; the sentimental cast of
his face deepened, until it seemed that he was about to come to tears.
He sang:

Come sit by my side litt-ul dau-ling,
And lay your brown head on my breast,
Whilse the angels of twilight o-round us
Are singing the flow-ohs to rest.

Banjo must have loved many ladies in many lands, for that is the gift
and the privilege of the troubadour. Now he seemed calling up their
vanished faces out of the twilight as he sang his little song. What
feeling he threw into the chorus, what shaking of the voice, what soft
sinking away of the last notes, the whang of the banjo softened by
palm across the strings!

The chorus:

O, what can be sweet-o than dreaming
Tho dream that is on us tonight!
Pre-haps do you know litt-ul dau-ling,
Tho future lies hidded from sight.

There was a great deal more of that song, which really was not so bad,
the way Banjo sang it, for he exalted it on the best qualities that
lived in his harmless breast; not so bad that way, indeed, as it looks
in print. Frances could not see where the joke at the little
musician's expense came in, although Nola was laughing behind his
unsuspecting back as the last notes died.

Mrs. Chadron wiped her eyes. "I think it's the sweetest song that ever
was sung!" she said, and meant it, every word.

Banjo said nothing at all, but put away his instrument with reverent
hands, as if no sound was worthy to come out of it after that sweet
agony of love.

Mrs. Chadron got up, in her large, bustling, hospitable way,
sentimentally satisfied, and withal grossly hungry.

"Supper'll be about ready now, children," she said, putting her sock
away in its basket, "and while you two are primpin' I'll run down to
the bunkhouse and take some chicken broth to Chance that Maggie made
him."

"Oh, poor old Chance!" Nola pitied, "I've been sitting here enjoying
myself and forgetting all about him. I'll take it down to him,
mother--Banjo he'll come with me."

Banjo was alert on the proposal, and keen to go. He brought Nola's
coat at her mother's suggestion, for the evening had a feeling of
frost in it, and attended her to the kitchen after the chicken broth
as gallantly as if he wore a sword.

Mrs. Chadron came back from her investigations in the kitchen in a
little while to Fr