the old
woman fanned the fire with her hat, while the man led the horses up to
the shafts. They all moved as quickly and quietly as snakes over moss.

'Ah!' said the girl. 'I'll teach you!' She beat the dog, who seemed to
expect it.

'Don't do that,' Una called down. 'It wasn't his fault.'

'How do you know what I'm beating him for?' she answered.

'For not seeing us,' said Dan. 'He was standing right in the smoke, and
the wind was wrong for his nose, anyhow.'

The girl stopped beating the dog and the old woman fanned faster than
ever.

'You've fanned some of your feathers out of the fire,' said Una.
'There's a tail-feather by that chestnut-tot.'

'What of it?' said the old woman, as she grabbed it.

'Oh, nothing!' said Dan. 'Only I've heard say that tail-feathers are as
bad as the whole bird, sometimes.'

That was a saying of Hobden's about pheasants. Old Hobden always burned
all feather and fur before he sat down to eat.

'Come on, mother,' the man whispered. The old woman climbed into the van
and the horses drew it out of the deep-rutted shaw on to the hard road.

The girl waved her hands and shouted something they could not catch.

'That was gipsy for "Thank you kindly, Brother and Sister,"' said
Pharaoh Lee.

He was standing behind them, his fiddle under his arm.

'Gracious, you startled me!' said Una.

'_You_ startled old Priscilla Savile,' Puck called from below them.
'Come and sit by their fire. She ought to have put it out before they
left.'

They dropped down the ferny side of the shaw. Una raked the ashes
together, Dan found a dead wormy oak branch that burns without flame,
and they watched the smoke while Pharaoh played a curious wavery air.

'That's what the girl was humming to the baby,' said Una.

'I know it,' he nodded, and went on:

'Ai Lumai, Lumai, Lumai! Luludia!
Ai Luludia!'

He passed from one odd tune to another, and quite forgot the children.
At last Puck asked him to go on with his adventures in Philadelphia and
among the Seneca Indians.

'I'm telling it,' he said, staring straight in front of him as he
played. 'Can't you hear?'

'Maybe, but _they_ can't. Tell it aloud,' said Puck.

Pharaoh shook himself, laid his fiddle beside him, and began:

'I'd left Red Jacket and Cornplanter riding home with me after Big Hand
had said that there wouldn't be any war. That's all there was to it. We
believed Big Hand and we went home again--we three braves. Wh