"I guess everything that comes to us is for the best, if we knew how to take it," she said. "Well, you set there and be comfortable, and I'll stir Maggie up and have her make you something nice for dinner. After that I want you to play me the old songs over before you go. Just to think I'll never hear them songs no more breaks my heart, Banjo--plumb breaks my heart!" As she passed Banjo she laid her hand on his head in a manner of benediction, and tears were in her eyes. The sun was out again when they had finished lunch, coaxing autumn on into November at the peril of frosted toes. Mrs. Chadron had brightened considerably, also. Even bereavement and sorrow could not shake her fealty to chili, and now it was rewarding her by a rubbing of her old color in her face as she sat by the window and waited for Banjo to tune his instruments for the parting songs. Her workbasket was beside her, the bright knitting-needles in the unfinished sock. It never would be completed now, she knew, but she kept it by her to cry over in the twilight hours, when thoughts of Saul came over her with their deep-harrowing pangs. Banjo sang the touching old ballads over to her appreciative ear, watching the shadows outside, as he played, for three o'clock. That was the hour set for him to go. "Silver Threads" was saved for the end, and when its last strain died Mrs. Chadron's face was hidden in her hands. She was rocking gently, her handkerchief fallen to the floor. Banjo put his bow in its place in the lid of the case, the rosin in its little box. But the fiddle he still held on his knee, stroking its smooth back with loving hand, as if he would soothe Mrs. Chadron's regrets and longings and back-tugging pains by that vicarious caress. So he sat petting his instrument, and after a little she looked at him, her eyes red, and tear-streaks on her face. "Don't put it away just yet, Banjo," she requested; "there's another one I want you to sing, and that will be the last. It's the saddest one you play--one that I couldn't stand one time--do you remember?" Banjo remembered; he nodded. "I can stand it now, Banjo; I want to hear it now." Banjo drew bow again, no more words on either side, and began his song: All o-lone and sad he left me, But no oth-o's bride I'll be; For in flow-os he bedecked me, In tho cottage by tho sea. When he finished, Mrs. Chadron's head was bent upon her arm across the little workstand where her basket stood. Her shoulders were moving in piteous convulsions, but no sound of crying came from her. Banjo knew that it was the hardest kind of weeping that tears the human heart. He put away his fiddle, and strapped the case. Then he went to her and laid his hand on her shoulder. "I'll have to be saddlin' up, mom," said he, his own voice thick, "and I'll say _adios_ to you now." "Good-bye, Banjo, and may God bless you in that country you're goin' to so fur away from the friends you used to know!"