on or accordion. A fiddle wus never made to sing
with, hit's all right fer dancin'. Lor', ye never hear any real music
less ye got a lead. That's the reason ye never hear any good singin' in
Baptus meetin'. They're agin manufactured music, they haven't got
enythin' to go by."

Lin had joined the Campbellite Church for the reason that it was the
furthest from the Baptist belief, so she claimed. Alfred always believed
down deep in his heart that Lin had allied herself with that particular
denomination for the reason that her vocal abilities were appreciated in
the little congregation and for the further reason that the church had
an organ.

Lin felt her exclusion from the minstrel rehearsals more than she cared
to reveal. Alfred did all he could to comfort her. He assured her that
Charley Wagner, the violin player, was not nearly so satisfactory as
she.

"But s'pose I had saved the melodeon"--(Lin always attributed her
rejection by the minstrel band to the loss of the melodeon)--"you
couldn't a-used it in the tan-yard, it's too damp there and it would
spoil the tune of it. Why, it's most ruined my tambourine. Beside,"
concluded Alfred, "regular minstrels are all men, they don't have any
women folks in 'em."

His explanation was plausible but it did not satisfy Lin. "Huh! I wasn't
good enuf fur yer ole tan-yard pack. I s'pose when ye got a lot of
patchin' and sewin' to do, ye'll be callin' on me but ye won't fin' me
in. Good bye, Mr. Clown, minstrel. Next time ye try to ak out afore
folks I hope ye'll do better en ye did the nite uv the big party."

This was a home thrust, it pierced to the quick. Alfred was over
sensitive. Often, when the remembrance of the failure alluded to by Lin
troubled his mind, he had soothed himself with the hope that few had
noticed his failure. But Lin's remark forced the awful feeling upon him
that, like Cousin Charley's potato deal, it was known and talked of by
the whole town.

Unexpected happenings brought the rehearsals of the minstrels in the old
tan-yard to an abrupt ending.

It was during the dark days of the reconstruction period, immediately
following the war. Only those of the south can fully realize what those
days meant to a people already impoverished by the _most gigantic war of
Christendom_.

Colonel Charlotte, once wealthy, now reduced to almost want, (we will
place his residence, oh anywhere, in Virginia, Georgia or Alabama); his
once productive plantation neglected