"Doctor," I said, petulantly, "if you would be a trifle more explicit I could probably guess, with some show of certainty, at what you mean!"
"Can't ye hear? Are ye deaf? Did ye ever, in all yer born days, hear a voice like that ere 'un? Listen!"
Sure enough, a voice of thrilling power, a rich, heavy, quavering alto, accompanied by some one thrumming on a guitar, trickled and gurgled, and poured through the open window of Sheehan's saloon. The song was a wild, drinking carol, full of rough, reckless wit, but I listened, entranced, till it was done.
"There now, say, what d'ye think o' that? Ain't things a workin' round awful curious, as I said?"
Delivering himself thus, the doctor got up and walked off.
When I again had an opportunity to speak to the landlord, I asked him if Doctor Hurd was not thought to be slightly demented.
"What! crazy, do you mean? No, sir; bright as a pin!"
"Well," said I, "he's a very queer fellow any how. By the way, who was that singing just now over in the saloon there?"
"Don't know, didn't hear 'em. Some of the boys, I s'pose. They have some lively swells over there sometimes. Awful hole."
I resumed my dime novel, and nothing further transpired to aggravate or satisfy my curiosity concerning the strange story I had heard, till night came down and the bats began to wheel through the moonless blackness above the dingy town. At the coming on of dusk I flung away the book and took to my pipe. Some one touched me on the shoulder, rousing me from a deep reverie, if not a doze.