My father made that fiddle in the cotton-fields of Georgia," the aged barber said.
The son of a race which for centuries had never known country or flag or any habitat, whose freedom was the soul of its existence, if it had a soul; a freedom defying all the usual laws of social order--the son of that race looked at the negro barber with something akin to awe.

Here was a man who had lived a life which was the staring antithesis of his own, under the whip as a boy, confined to compounds; whose vision was constricted to the limits of an estate; who was at the will of one man, to be sold and trafficked with like a barrel of herrings, to be worked at another's will--and at no price! This was beyond the understanding of Jethro Fawe.

But awe has the outward look of respect, and old Berry who had his own form of vanity, saw that he had had a rare effect on the fellow, who evidently knew all about fiddles.

Certainly that was a wonderful sound he had produced from his own cotton-field fiddle.
In the pause Ingolby said to Jethro Fawe, "Play something, won't you?
I've got business here with Mr.Berry, but five minutes of good music won't matter.

We'd like to hear him play--wouldn't we, Berry ?" The old man nodded assent.