Goskin almost fainted at the admission.

“Stranger, do tackle it, and give us a tune! Nary man in this camp ever had the nerve to wrestly with that music-box.” His pulse beat faster, for he feared that the man would refuse.

“I’ll do the best I can,” he said.

There was no stool, but seizing a candle-box, he drew it up and seated himself before the instrument. It only required a few seconds for a hush to come over the room.

“That old coon is going to give the thing a rattle.”

The sight of a man at the piano was something so unusual that even the faro-dealer, who was about to take in a fifty-dollar bet on the tray, paused and did not reach for the money. Men stopped drinking, with the glasses at their lips. Conversation appeared to have been struck with a sort of paralysis, and cards were no longer shuffled.

The old man brushed back his long white locks, looked up to the ceiling, half closed his eyes, and in a mystic sort of reverie passed his fingers over the keys. He touched but a single note, yet the sound thrilled the room. It was the key to his improvisation, and as he wove his chords together the music laid its spell upon every ear and heart. He felt his way along the keys like a man treading uncertain paths, but he gained confidence as he progressed, and presently bent to his work like a master. The instrument was not in exact tune, but the ears of his audience did not detect anything radically wrong. They heard a succession of grand chords, a suggestion of paradise, melodies here and there, and it was enough.

“See him counter with his left!” said an old rough enraptured.

“He calls the turn every time on the upper end of the board,” responded a man with a stack of chips in his hand.

The player wandered off into the old ballads they had heard at home. All the sad and melancholy and touching songs, that came up like dreams of childhood, this unknown player drew from the keys. His hands kneaded their hearts like dough and squeezed out tears as from a wet sponge.

As the strains flowed one upon the other, the listeners saw their homes of the long-ago reared again: they were playing once more where the apple-blossoms sank through the soft air to join the violets on the green turf of the old New England States; they saw the glories of the Wisconsin maples and the haze of the Indian summer blending their hues together; they recalled the heather of Scottish hills, the white cliffs of Britain, and heard the sullen roar of the sea, as it beat upon their memories, vaguely. Then came all the old Christmas carols, such as they had sung in church thirty years before; the subtle music that brings up the glimmer of wax tapers, the solemn shrines, the evergreen, holly, mistletoe, and surpliced choirs. Then the remorseless performer planted his final stab in every heart with “Home, Sweet Home.”

When the player ceased the crowd slunk away from him. There was no more revelry and devlilment left in his audience. Each man wanted to sneak off to his cabin and write the old folks a letter. The day was breaking as the last man left the place, and the player, with his head on the piano, fell asleep.

“I say, pard,” said Goskin, “don’t you want a little rest?”

“I feel tired,” the old man said. “Perhaps you’ll let me rest here for the matter of a day or so.”

He walked behind the bar, where some old blankets were lying, and stretched himself upon them.

“I feel pretty sick. I guess I won’t last long. I’ve got a brother down in the ravine—his name’s Driscoll. He don’t know I’m here. Can you get him before morning? I’d like to see his face once before I die.”