Mark Antony Figgins was in despair.
"Play again, sweet instrument," he cried, anxiously, "play again."
Again the sweet note sounded and again the solitary orphan felt comforted.
"It's a flute; it must be a flute," he murmured to himself, as he listened. "I always liked the flute. It's so soft and melancholy."
The grocer had a faint recollection of his boyhood's days, when he had been a tolerably efficient performer on a penny whistle.
Just at this moment the mournful note he heard recalled the past vividly.
So vividly, that Mr. Figgins, in the depths of his loneliness, fixed his eyes sadly on the turned-up toes of his leather slippers, and wept.
As the melody proceeded, so did the drops pour more copiously from the orphan's eyes.
And no wonder, for of all the doleful too-tooings ever uttered by wind instrument, this was the dolefullest.
But it suited Mr. Figgin's mood at that moment.