kins reclined, his features drawn into a painful grimace,
as his right hand passed to and fro before his mouth, rhythmically
twanging the tongue of a Jew's-harp, upon which he was playing "To My
Sweet Sunny South Take Me Home." He breathed heavily and irregularly.
His eyes were on the big white clouds in the blue sky, and his heart
was filled with the poetry of lonesomeness that sometimes comes to
boys in pensive moods. For the days when he had lived with his father,
a nomad of the creeks that flowed by half a score of waterways into
the Mississippi, were upon the far horizon of his consciousness, and
the memory of those days made him as sad as any memory ever can make a
healthy, care-free boy. He played "Dixie," partly because it was his
dead father's favorite tune, and partly because, being sprightly, it
kept down his melancholy. Later he took out a new mouth-organ, which
his foster mother had given to him, and to satisfy his boyish idea of
justice played "We shall Meet, but We shall Miss Him," because it
was Miss Morgan's favorite. While he played the Jew's-harp his tree
friends flung ribald remarks at him. But when Bud began to waver his
hand for a tremulo upon the mouth-organ as he played "Marsa's in
de Col', Col' Groun'," a peace fell upon the company, and they sat
quietly and heard his repertoire,--"Ol' Shadey," "May, Dearest May,"
"Lilly Dale," "Dey Stole My Chile Away," "Ol' Nicodemus," "Sleeping, I
Dream, Love," and "Her Bright Smile." He was a Southern boy--a bird of
passage caught in the North--and his music had that sweet, soothing
note that cheered the men who fought under the Stars and Bars.

Into this scene rushed Mealy Jones, pell mell, hat in hand,
breathless, bringing war's alarms. "Fellers, fellers," screamed Mealy,
half a block away, "it's a-comin' here! It's goin' to be here in two
weeks. The man's puttin' up the boards now, and you can get a job
passin' bills."

An instant later the tree was deserted, and five boys were running as
fast as their legs would carry them toward the thick of the town. They
stopped at the new pine bill-board, and did not leave the man with the
paste bucket until they had seen "Zazell" flying out of the cannon's
mouth, the iron-jawed woman performing her marvels, the red-mouthed
rhinoceros with the bleeding native impaled upon its horn and the
fleeing hunters near by, "the largest elephant in captivity," carrying
the ten-thousand dollar beauty, the acrobats whirling thro