Cho:—“Hold the fort for I am coming,
Jesus signals still.
Wave the answer back to heaven,
By Thy grace we will!”
Farmer Vance was the first to strike in on the chorus; he sang a tolerably good bass. Very soon two or three of the others caught the strain, and the barn fairly rang with the soul-inspiring words.
“I give it up,” whispered Joe Derrick to our friend of the shirt-sleeves. “Think of Dan Harte singing psalm tunes! There must be a something to turn him right square about so. An’ the old place, too. Been by there lately? Looks like a garding—all the front yard does. An’ he’s built on a shed for his wife to wash in; actu’ly has a carpet in t’other room.”
“I suppose you an’ me could have carpets, Joe, if we’d let drink alone,” said the other, soberly. “But what beats me is the way Vance held in out there in the hay-field. ’Tain’t natural, ’n I can’t account for ’t. If anybody’d a told me that man would stand there and see that hay as good as sp’iled and never say a word—he looked kind a riled, you could see that—I’d a risked my best hat!”
“But seein’’s believin’, and as for hearin’—Hark, now!”
Dan had struck into,