"That's all right, pardner—Nature saved us the trouble in your case," said Pellams, the thoughtless.
The clear head in the room—Lyman's always—took it all in; Frank made a step to come between the Junior and his victim. Then he turned, half-unconsciously, toward Mason. Jimmie was standing with his hands on the table, looking straight before him, and in that look Frank read the certainty that the case was out of his control. For the Face was rising before Jimmie Mason once more; it had twisted itself in with the relaxed, foolish features before him, until he saw his father there, a mock and a shame. It was not his father, of course—he passed his hand before his eyes as though to clear them—but suppose that somewhere else a crowd had his father—and he not there to——
The Angel of Pity, or the Universal Conscience, or whatever it is that you and I have learned from our books and our teachers to put as our symbol of the belief in the higher things, wrote upon his records that night that a prayer had gone up, for the first time, from the dingy back room of the Hotel Mayfield.
Pellams had the old man singing now, in a cracked, maudlin voice, and his keeper was beating time with a billiard cue. Then the amateur conductor had one of his inspirations.
"Hey, a trio! The event of the evening! General Hardshell Jackson, Señor Lupe de Tamale, and the renowned lyric barytone, James Russell Lowell Mason, will combine in a grand farewell concert. Ascend the platform, Señor!" he cried to the Mexican lad, who stood, wide-eyed, in a corner. Then he gestured wildly toward the door.
"Hey, Jimmie, come back here," he called; "don't let him out, boys!"
Jimmie had reached the door when Lyman caught his sleeve.
"Where are you going?"
"Home."
"You mean the Hall?"