aid by way of apology to me.

It was a sad pleasure to me, as to him, this revival of youthful
memories, and I would have spared him if I could, but my father insisted
upon having all of the jocund dances and sweet old songs. Although a man
of deep feeling in many ways, he could not understand the tragedy of my
uncle's failing skill.

But mother did! Her ear was too acute not to detect the difference in
tone between his playing at this time and the power of expression he had
once possessed, and in her shadowy corner she suffered sympathetically
when beneath his work-worn fingers the strings cried out discordantly.
The wrist, once so strong and sure, the hands so supple and swift were
now hooks of horn and bronze. The magic touch of youth had vanished,
and yet as he went on, some little part of his wizardry came back.

At father's request he played once more _Maggie, Air Ye Sleepin'_, and
while the strings wailed beneath his bow I shivered as of old, stirred
by the winds of the past "roaring o'er Moorland craggy." Deep in my
brain the sob of the song sank, filling my inner vision with flitting
shadows of vanished faces, brows untouched of care, and sweet kind eyes
lit by the firelight of a secure abundant hearth. I was lying once more
before the fire in David's little cabin in the deep Wisconsin valley and
Grandfather McClintock, a dreaming giant, was drumming on his chair, his
face flame-lit, his hair a halo of snow and gold.

Tune after tune the old Borderman played, in answer to my father's
insistent demands, until at last the pain of it all became unendurable
and he ended abruptly. "I can't play any more.--I'll never play again,"
he added harshly as he laid the violin away in its box like a child in
its coffin.

We sat in silence, for we all realized that never again would we hear
those wistful, meaningful melodies. Wordless, with aching throats,
resentful of the present, my mother and my aunt dreamed of the bright
and beautiful Neshonoc days when they were young and David was young and
all the west was a land of hope.

My father now joined in urging David to go back to the middle border.
"I'll put you on my farm," he said. "Or if you want to go back to
Neshonoc, we'll help you do that. We are thinking of going back there
ourselves."

David sadly shook his grizzled head. "No, I can't do that," he repeated.
"I haven't money enough to pay my carfare, and besides, Becky and the
children would never consent to it