"I never heard the banjo played."
Jack instantly produced the instrument, and, tuning it, gave them song after song. Brother and sister listened entranced. Never in their lives had they met anybody like Jack Chanty. He was master of an insinuating tone not usually associated with the blatant banjo. Without looking at her, he sang love-songs to Mary that shook her breast. In her wonder and pleasure she unconsciously let fall the guard over her eyes, and Jack's heart beat fast at what he read there.
Warned at last by the darkness, Mary sprang up. "We must go," she said breathlessly.
Davy, who had come unwillingly, was more unwilling to go. But the hint of "father's" anger was sufficient to start him.
Jack detained Mary for an instant at the edge of the clearing. He dropped the air of the genial host. "I shall not be able to sleep to-night," he said swiftly.
"Nor I," she murmured. "Th—thinking of the theatre," she added lamely.
"When everybody is asleep," he pleaded, "come outside your house. I'll be waiting for you. I want to talk to you alone."
She made no answer, but raised her eyes for a moment to his, two deep, deep pools of wistfulness. "Ah, be good to me! Be good to me," they seemed to plead with him. Then she darted after her brother.
The look sobered Jack, but not for very long. "She'll come," he thought exultingly.
Left alone, he worked like a beaver, chopping and carrying wood for his fire. Under stress of emotion he turned instinctively to violent physical exertion for an outlet. He was more moved than he knew. In an hour, being then as dark as it would get, he exchanged the axe for the banjo, and, slinging it over his back, set forth.