n as "Bear-Tone."

As opportunities for musical instruction thereabouts were limited, the
old Squire, who loved music and who was himself a fair singer, had
advised us to go. Five of us, together with our two young neighbors,
Kate and Thomas Edwards, drove over to Bagdad in a three-seated pung
sleigh.

The old schoolhouse was crowded with young people when we arrived, and a
babel of voices burst on us as we drew rein at the door. After helping
the girls from the pung, Addison and I put up the horses at a farmer's
barn near by. When we again reached the schoolhouse, a gigantic man in
an immense, shaggy buffalo coat was just coming up. He entered the
building a step behind us.

It was Bear-Tone; and a great hush fell on the young people as he
appeared in the doorway. Squeezing hurriedly into seats with the others,
Addison and I faced round. Bear-Tone stood in front of the teacher's
desk, near the stovepipe, rubbing his huge hands together, for the night
was cold. He was smiling, too--a friendly, genial smile that seemed
actually to brighten the room.

If he had looked gigantic to us in the dim doorway, he now looked
colossal. In fact, he was six feet five inches tall and three feet
across the shoulders. He had legs like mill-posts and arms to match; he
wore big mittens, because he could not buy gloves large enough for his
hands. He was lean and bony rather than fat, and weighed three hundred
and twenty pounds, it was said.

His face was big and broad, simple and yet strong; it was ringed round
from ear to ear with a short but very thick sandy beard. His eyes were
blue, his hair, like his beard, was sandy. He was almost forty years old
and was still a bachelor.

"Wal, young ones," he said at last, "reckonin' trundle-bed trash,
there's a lot of ye, ain't there?"

His voice surprised me. From such a massive man I had expected to hear a
profound bass. Yet his voice was not distinctly bass, it was clear and
flexible. He could sing bass, it is true, but he loved best to sing
tenor, and in that part his voice was wonderfully sweet.

As his speech at once indicated, he was an ignorant man. He had never
had musical instruction; he spoke of soprano as "tribble," of alto as
"counter," and of baritone as "bear-tone"--a mispronunciation that had
given him his nickname.

But he could sing! Melody was born in him, so to speak, full-fledged,
ready to sing. Musical training would have done him no good, and it
might have done h