test attraction for her.
His eyes looked down so smilingly into hers that she felt he surely
understood every word she said to him. Once Walker overheard her saying,
"Uncle Tom, I'm goin' to tell you a story 'bout Billy Goat Gruff."

Peeping into the room, he saw the child looking earnestly up at the
picture, with her hands clasped behind her, as she began to repeat her
favourite story. "It do beat all," he said to himself, "how one little
chile like that can wake up a whole house. She's the life of the place."

The last evening of her visit, as the Colonel was coming down-stairs he
heard the faint vibration of a harp-string. It was the first time Lloyd
had ever ventured to touch one. He paused on the steps opposite the
door, and looked in.

"Heah, Fritz," she was saying, "you get up on the sofa, an' be the
company, an' I'll sing fo' you."

Fritz, on the rug before the fire, opened one sleepy eye and closed
it again. She stamped her foot and repeated her order. He paid no
attention. Then she picked him up bodily, and, with much puffing and
pulling, lifted him into a chair.

He waited until she had gone back to the harp, and then, with one
spring, disappeared under the sofa.

"N'm min'," she said, in a disgusted tone. "I'll pay you back, mistah."
Then she looked up at the portrait. "Uncle Tom," she said, "you be the
company, an' I'll play fo' you."

Her fingers touched the strings so lightly that there was no discord in
the random tones. Her voice carried the air clear and true, and the
faint trembling of the harp-strings interfered with the harmony no more
than if a wandering breeze had been tangled in them as it passed.

"Sing me the songs that to me were so deah
Long, long ago, long ago.
Tell me the tales I delighted to heah
Long, long ago, long ago."

The sweet little voice sang it to the end without missing a word. It was
the lullaby her mother oftenest sang to her.

The Colonel, who had sat down on the steps to listen, wiped his eyes.

"My 'long ago' is all that I have left to me," he thought, bitterly,
"for to-morrow this little one, who brings back my past with every word
and gesture, will leave me, too. Why can't that Jack Sherman die while
he's about it, and let me have my own back again?"

That question recurred to him many times during the week after Lloyd's
departure. He missed her happy voice at every turn. He missed her bright
face at the table. The house seemed so big and desolate wi