"Tom, I didn't ken that ye could play like that. It made me feel that I was fighting the Shawnese again, and that I was knocking them right and left, and then it seemed to me that I was in the Rough Waters, hearing the noise of the rapids, and guiding a raft around the rocks, and then it seemed to me as if the raft was a-dashed to pieces and I was flung solitary and alone on the shore without a friend and without a baubee in my pocket to buy a night's lodging. It near made me greet. Hunter Tom, ye are a wonderful man."
There were tears in the pilot's eyes.
"I tell you, Hunter Tom, you should be on the stage. Play like that before an audience in New Orleans, New York, or London and your fortune is made. Whose melody was it?" said Ande.
"The melody is my own. Ne'er a note of it was e'er on paper; I composed it here in the wilderness and it's a history of my own life and my family. The end of the piece represents me now, a solitary dweller in the wilderness, an exile from home, with no friends but the great God above." The old man bowed his head in weariness, and then sat down on the wooden bench 'neath the trees.
"Ye have other tunes?" asked Hugh.
"Hunter Tom, you never told me that you were a composer and ne'er played that for me before. You have other melodies of your own; play them for us," said Ande.
"Aye, I have other tunes, and many of my own, but I'm not going to make ye sad with an old man's woes. I'll play ye 'Chevy Chase' and 'I See Three Ships Come Sailing In,' to make your hearts glad, and then I'll give ye some more of my own composition." The familiar airs, one after the other, in sequence, airs so delightful to the English ear, came forth from the violin under the magical touch of the old man, and all the while the pilot listened as if he was entranced, and Ande,—it seemed as if the green fields and coasts of England arose before him. Again he saw the Manor and the Manor woods, the Bowling Green of old Helston, and the gleaming, shimmering waters of the Lowe, and the rolling blue of the channel beyond. All passed before him again as if in a dream, and then there were faces that passed before his mind, Tom Puckinharn, Pengilly, and Tom Glaze, and the face of his mother, and back beyond all, a dark-eyed, youthful face, with dark curling locks deep on a broad brow, a countenance, merry, and with something of the joyousness of spring flowers in the gently flushing cheeks. There was an intense longing in his eyes as he allowed his imagination to roam at will. Ah, it was eight long years since he had seen her, and heard those words: "You are my knight." Would she remember him still? Was she married?
The thought gave him pain, and he drove it from him and thought of other themes. The Primrose Cottage arose clearly to his mind. Ah, he must get well soon and return to those haunts of boyhood, and to the dear ones of years ago. But what was that that the old hunter was playing? It could not be "Chevy Chase." The opening bars were swept off the strings with a master's hand. Soft at first and then with louder, more resonant tones. The old man was standing again, his head partly elevated, a look of hopefulness on his weather-beaten countenance. The pilot was drinking in, with eager ears, the melody, and sat motionless. The opening bars were finished, and the old hunter's voice rang out clear and with a wonderful pathos in the tones. He had sung before in other melodies, but never with such feeling as now. Ande rose on one elbow and stared excitedly at the old man. That song! Where had he learned it!
"Blithe bird of the wilderness, sweet is thy song,
Blithe lark of the wildwood, O, all the day long,
A-singing so cheerily in the green tree,
Thy anthem dispels gloom and sorrow from me;
Thou sayest in thy song, 'What can sadness avail?
Injustice shall fall and the good shall prevail.'"