ith joy, he seemed
for the moment quite unconscious of any one's presence. But presently he
stopped, looked involuntarily upward a minute, as if he felt himself
observed from above. Then, turning to the old people, who stood together
before the mantel, delightedly watching him, he said:

"Bet you my angel twin ain't ashamed, ef he's a-lookin' down on me
to-day."

THE TWO TIMS

THE TWO TIMS

As the moon sent a white beam through the little square window of old
Uncle Tim's cabin, it formed a long panel of light upon its
smoke-stained wall, bringing into clear view an old banjo hanging upon a
rusty nail. Nothing else in the small room was clearly visible. Although
it was Christmas eve, there was no fire upon the broad hearth, and from
the open door came the odor of honeysuckles and of violets. Winter is
often in Louisiana only a name given by courtesy to the months coming
between autumn and spring, out of respect to the calendar; and so it was
this year.

Sitting in the open doorway, his outline lost in the deep shadows of the
vine, was old Uncle Tim, while, upon the floor at his side lay little
Tim, his grandson. The boy lay so still that in the dim half-light he
seemed a part of the floor furnishings, which were, in fact, an old cot,
two crippled stools, a saddle, and odds and ends of broken harness, and
bits of rope.

Neither the old man nor the boy had spoken for a long time, and while
they gazed intently at the old banjo hanging in the panel of light, the
thoughts of both were tinged with sadness. The grandfather was nearly
seventy years old, and little Tim was but ten; but they were great
chums. The little boy's father had died while he was too young to
remember, leaving little Tim to a step-mother, who brought him to his
grandfather's home, where he had been ever since, and the attachment
quickly formed between the two had grown and strengthened with the
years.

Old Uncle Tim was very poor, and his little cabin was small and shabby;
and yet neither hunger nor cold had ever come in an unfriendly way to
visit it. The tall plantation smoke-house threw a friendly shadow over
the tiny hut every evening just before the sun went down--a shadow that
seemed a promise at close of each day that the poor home should not be
forgotten. Nor was it. Some days the old man was able to limp into the
field and cut a load of cabbages for the hands, or to prepare seed
potatoes for planting, so that, as he expresse