y did not understand the English words, but being
natives and instinctively attuned to the most ancient of emotions that
throbbed in the low baritone, they listened silently and stared out
into the night long after the singer had passed.

He reached the house, hesitated. Lindsey had said that the fellows
wanted him to come over to the Club ... he had neglected
opportunities to be with these good friends. He sailed his cap up
through an open window and crossing a corner of the square went up
into the gayly lighted building.

That night at the Club became a sort of tradition in the Gulf. They
still tell, wonderingly, of how he entered--a laughing, mischievous,
fun-loving boy, and of how the crowd welcomed this new Terry that none
of them had ever known before. They talk, still, of his deviltries,
the clean jests and keen wit he whetted--always at his own expense,
and as rough old Burns put it the next morning when they talked it
over: "And he niver took a drink and he niver cussed once, I'll be
---- if he did!" As the story of Terry's night at Club spread over the
Gulf all of the planters found excuses to bring them into town
afternoons in the hope of being present when he came again. They rode
in by pony or launch every night for two weeks, and then they ceased
coming.

For two hours he held them in the spell of his infectious deviltries.
Irrepressibly gay, impish, it seemed as if he vented all of the stored
up boyishness in him, spilled it in one heaping measure. Story
followed story, in quickly shifting brogues that rocked the building
with the sidesore laughter of the transported audience; they followed
him through a seemingly inexhaustible series of anecdote, through a
dozen ridiculous parodies he sang to a one-handed accompaniment
chorded on the battered piano the while he pantomimed with free hand
and roguish face.

"Why," whispered the astonished Cochran, "the--the--son of a gun!"

The uproar stilled suddenly as, seated at the old piano, he forgot
them for a moment, saw a vision on the white wall that was not visible
to the others. A few deep chords from knowing fingers, then his low
voice, rich with the depth of his happiness:

Love, to share again those winged scented days,
Those starry skies:
To see once more your joyous face,
Your tender eyes ...

The song, or something in the deep voice, pulled at the heart-strings
of those lonely men, who, womenless, never discussed women. Burns
sn