“You will play, though, won’t you, sir?”
“You bet I will, Miss Honey Bird. And I pray the Lord will keep a guard over my bow and hold it down to hymn tunes. If so be, that thar bow should get Old Nick in it, as I’ve known it to do afore now, I might have the whole kit and boodle footing the Highland fling or the Virginia reel right there on the floor of the meeting house.”
Carin laughed merrily.
“Oh, do come along quick and meet papa,” she said. “You’ll be such good friends.” She ran ahead in her eagerness, urging “Haystack Thompson” to follow.
It had not been necessary for her to ask why he had this curious name, for she knew very well that it had been given to him because of his wild crop of hair, which did indeed look like a stack of hay after a bad windstorm.
“I’d no idea that Azalea and I had come so far,” she said to her new friend. “We wandered on and on, talking, and when we came to that lovely hollow we couldn’t keep out of it.”
They were getting to the clearing, and they could see the people moving toward the church. Mr. Thompson caught a glimpse of Mr. Pickett, and the two musicians greeted each other like long-lost brothers, and walked toward the meeting house in great enthusiasm, making an odd pair, for Mr. Pickett, for all of his air of importance, reached no higher than Mr. Thompson’s shoulder. Carin found her father just as he was going in the door and dragged him back to meet her new acquaintance; and a moment later, everyone had seen “Old Haystack” and was clamoring for his music. Mr. Thompson was given the post of honor, and there he stood, towering up toward the pointed roof, his faded fiddle in his hand, tears in his eyes, smiling at his old friends.
He tuned up carefully, and ran his bow lovingly across the string a few times, then gave a shake to the “haystack” and began to play “Old Hundred.” At first it was as if a deep voice, full of love of God and life were singing; then as if a chorus of children’s voices sang it in joy; then as if the wind called it to the sea and the sea answered; then as if the hills shouted it and the voices of all living things joined in.
Carin found herself on her feet—found herself, indeed, wishing that she could fly. For a moment it seemed as if she were flying, but when she looked about her, she saw that she was not, but was standing singing at the top of her lungs with all the others. And then for an hour, while the tall, gaunt fiddler drew his music from his instrument, and the people followed him as if they had one voice, Carin forgot everything in the world except the music. But suddenly it ended. The fiddler played some minor theme which no one knew, and which was born in his brain that moment. All the people took it for the note of parting and filed out of the church. And once out, they seemed in little mood to talk. They had been too deeply moved for that. They preferred to get in their vehicles and drive off into the silence of the lonely mountain roads. Carin, certainly, was glad that she could snuggle in the back seat of their surrey with her mother, and sit there in quiet. She was strangely tired, and wanted nothing in the world except to rest, and she thought, in the back of her mind, that probably Azalea was feeling the same way. That made her wonder how it was that she had not seen Azalea after they all went back into the church, and she was just going to speak to her mother about it, when Mrs. McBirney came running toward them with a white face.
“We can’t find Azalea anywhere,” she cried. “We’ve looked everywhere—pa and Jim and Hi, and Mr. Pickett and lots of others. We can’t find her anywhere!”