When Slab reached the horse-block, although he said nothing to the girl, he took a posture that indicated pointedly that he expected something of her; and she slipped from the horse-block and sat down on the big grapevine family bench a few feet distant.
Here a blind hound appeared and, feeling his way slowly and uncertainly, laid his old muzzle in the girl's lap and raised his sightless eyes to where he knew her face must be.
Then Slab took Belle-Ann's place on the witch-elm block and produced his beloved instrument—a cross between guitar and banjo, self-made of gut and a gourd. Just as he had done every fair night for years, he was ready to sing his favorite song.
He maintained vigorously that if he sat elsewhere than on the horse-block the banjo fell bewitched and refused to answer its master's fingers.
Tentatively, he plucked the strings; then launched abruptly into the song he had rendered for years—a sad and stirring melody, telling the early love-story that had been his before the days of emancipation:
"You ask what makes this darky weep,
Why he, like others, is not gay?
What makes the tears roll down his cheek,
From early morn till close of day?
My story, darkies, you shall hear,
For in my memory fresh it dwells,
'Twill cause you then to drop a tear
On the grave of my sweet Kitty Wells."
When the notes had died away Belle-Ann spoke up:
"Slab, ef pap er th' boys don't cum short now, I'll blow th' horn, I reckon."
"No—no, honey; doan yo' blow dat horn. Yo' let dat horn blow itse'f if it's got t' blow; but doan you blow it, honey. Yo' jist let pap be—he'll cum heah soon. 'Sides, ain't Slab heah wif yo', honey—ain't Slab heah?"
The old negro picked the strings with a preface to the second verse of "Kitty Wells," his condolence being entirely lost on Belle-Ann.