The usual hubbub had calmed while a story-teller, who sat on the edge of a table, and whose slouch-hat and high ulster collar did not altogether conceal the genial face of Dr. Knox, entertained the crowd with old army yarns, which, as usual with such literature, were taken largely from the apocryphal portion of our national annals.
"Bully for you! Give us another!" was the encore, emphasized with the rattle of backgammon-boards and boot-heels.
"Haven't any more; but I have a friend here who will bring up the reserves in the way of a song."
"Song, song! Rosin your larynx, old boy!" greeted the suggestion, while the crowd gathered closer about Vox, and several who had "turned in" for the night turned out of their bunks again, minus coats and boots. A friendly slap on the back by something less than a ten-pound hand helped the singer to clear his throat.
Vox gave them "O'Grady's Goat" and one or two other classics of the Tenderloin district, with the rapt appreciation of his audience. Tom Moore's "Minstrel Boy," to the genuine old Irish melody, struck the heroic chord in the breasts of men most of whom were deserters from the real battle-fields of life. Then Vox dropped into a lullaby. The tender mother words given in his masculine tones seemed a burlesque as he began; but the deep bass took on the softness and sweetness of a contralto, and made one think, if not of a mother cooing to her baby, at least of some rough, great-hearted man who had found a lost child and was rocking it to sleep in his strong arms. More than one greasy sleeve got into its owner's eyes before Vox ended.
"An' 'aven't ye a Scotch sang, me laddie?" asked an old fellow, knocking the ashes from his pipe against the window-sill.
"My Ain Countrie" followed. As the music floated, the thick smoke of the room seemed to drift away. The land of birds and beauty lay before eyes that for months and years had looked only upon the crowded misery of slumdom. When the voice ceased the illusion continued for a while in spite of the picking sleet at the window-panes.
At length the silence was broken by a voice that came from a distant corner of the room. It repeated the last verse in tones as pure as those of Vox himself, though a high tenor in quality. Some of the notes were broken by hiccups.
Vox looked in amazement at the singer—a half-drunken youngish man curled nearly double in a chair which was tipped back against the wall. His battered derby and unscraped chin did not effectually disguise the handsome fellow beneath them. He was like the Apollo Belvedere when first exhumed from the mud of Antium.
"Who are you, my friend?" asked Vox, in as kindly a tone as his surprise allowed.