Mason Rogers at one end of the room, his eyes beaming, his face shining, made the fiddle hum and sing. Interspersed with his music came energetic promptings, "Balance all!" "Swing yer pardnahs!" "Ladies, chain!" "Gals to the centah, an' boys all around!" Sometimes he admonished some laggard or blunderer, "Hurry, thah, Sammy!" "Bill, to the left!" his feet the while tapping the floor, and his body swaying rhythmically as his right arm swung the bow and the fingers of his left hand twinkled over the strings. A further incentive to merriment was the excited admiration of the negroes gathered outside at doors and windows--not only the darkeys of the Rogers household, but many from neighboring domains as well--heads bobbing, eyes rolling, teeth glistening, as their feet beat time on the frozen ground. Sometimes a dusky swain caught some dusky maid around the waist and swung her merrily; and all promised themselves "jes' sech a dance in the big cabin, nex' Sat'day night, with Marse Bushrod Hinkson's Jake fur fiddler." CHAPTER VII. THE "HOUSE-RAISIN'" Soon after coming to the neighborhood, Abner Dudley, heeding the advice of Mason Rogers, had gone to see the tract of land lying on Hinkson's Creek. He found it to be all that Rogers had said of it--a rich, well-watered, well-timbered body of land. Early in November he had purchased of Simon Lucky his "head right" to four hundred acres, for four hundred and fifty dollars. He had enough money for the first payment, and Mason Rogers became security for the rest of the purchase price. After making a rough survey of the land, and recording the transfer in the land office at the county-seat, Dudley, with his ax, notched the corner trees of his purchase, and thus took formal possession. "Well, Abner," said Rogers the evening after he and young Dudley had returned from Bourbonton, whither they had gone to record the deed of transfer, "you've got four hundred acres uv ez good land ez thar is in Bourbon County, or in Kaintucky, fur thet matteh, an' now you kin push yer way right on, an' in a few years you'll be inderpendent rich. Ef I wuz you, I'd buy up a lot o' hogs, an' turn 'em loose in the woods, ez soon's you git yer place fenced in. They'll be no expense fer ther keep; they'll fatten on the mast undah the trees, an' be an advantidge ev'ry way. Henry'll holp you Sat'days to cl'ar off breshwood an' cut down trees, so's to let in the sun to dry yer ground in time fer yer spring plowin'. I'll spar' you Rube an' Tom this wintah sometimes, when thar ain't much a-doin' at home, an' you kin hev the ox team, too, to haul off the bresh. You'd bettah begin nex' Sat'day to girdle 'bout a dozen o' them big oaks ovah thar on yer west slope--it'll mek splendid cawn-ground."