Louder and louder, higher and higher rose the giant voice, till filling all the hollow clearing, it overflowed the leafy walls of forest green in waves of jocund and melodious sound. Chapter IV. HOW SOMEBODY WAS LOST IN THE PARADISE. For an hour or two the plowing and singing went cheerily on; Bushie, the while, shifting his perch upon the fence to keep himself on a line with the furrow next to be run. When the plow was not in sight he amused himself by watching the squirrels at play, or the birds at nest-building, or the crows where they still kept their station on the blasted limb of the oak. By this time the assembly had grown more noisy and obstreperous than ever, till finally, all order and decorum lost, the big talk broke up in a big row, the radicals turning tails upon each other and flying away to the north and the south; the conservatives, understanding each other no better, flying away to the east and the west. Each time, as he neared the end of his furrow, Burl cutting short his singing the moment he spied his little master, would send forward at the top of his stentorian lungs his wonted greeting, "I yi, you dogs!" This was a favorite expression with him, and variously to be understood according to circumstances. Treading the peace-path barefooted and shirt-sleeved, he was wont to use it as a form of friendly greeting, in the sense of "hail fellow well met," or "Good-morning, my friend," or as a note of brotherly cheer, equivalent to "Hurrah, boys!" or "Bully for you!" But treading the war-path, moccasin-shod and double-shirted, with rifle on shoulder and hatchet in belt, he used the expression in an altogether different sense. Then it became his battle-cry, his note of defiance, his war-whoop, his trumpet-call to victory and scalps. Taken by the Indians, who never heard it but to their cost, it was understood as the English for "Die, die, red dogs!" While making his turns between rounds, Burl, glancing complacently up at his little master, would make some remark about the squirrels and the birds who seemed to be in a "monstrous" fine humor that morning, or about the crows who seemed to be in a "monstrous" bad humor: "De corn now gittin' too tall an' strong for 'em to pull up--de black rogues!" Once or twice it was a sympathetic inquiry about "our little legs," with a comment upon the efficacy of spit for drawing out "de smartin' an' stingin' of brier-scratches." Oftener, however, than any thing else, it was the assurance that by the time the plowing should reach a certain shell-bark hickory that stood near the middle of the field the dinner-horn would be blowing, when the little man should go home "a-ridin' ol' Cornwallis;" the little man always answering this with a grin of glad anticipation. The turn by this time fairly made, the plowing and singing would recommence: "Come, come! come, corn, come! Burl a-plowin' in de fiel', A-singin' fur de roasin'-ear to come.