“Was it the instrument? Who can tell?” The clergyman asked himself that question. Cousin Herman asked it. Many others queried over it.
It may have been. Who can tell? Strangely enough, no one ventured to ask the little half-breed. Had they done so, she doubtless would have answered, in her reverent way, “It was not me. It was just Our Father,” surely adding, “and Daddy Joe’s fiddle.”
CHAPTER XV.
TIME has passed. Though Aunt Mean and Uncle Reuben still live at the Bend, years have left their traces. They rest now through the day in their armchairs. Their faces are happy—far happier than in the old hard-working days.
Aunt Mean’s strong-minded features soften as she talks to Reuben, through his ear-trumpet, of the long ago.
“You were always a good woman, Mean,” he answers, soothingly. How love forgets its hardships and recounts its joys.
“I wasn’t no heathen, brother, but I was only half converted until that night.”
“We was all revived,” gently replies Uncle Reuben, “even the minister. Bless his soul, he’s got his reward for goodness now.”
“Hush! she’s coming.”
Footsteps sound upon the stairs. A sweet, low voice mingles with the Irish brogue of Biddy in the kitchen.