E-text prepared by Al Haines

"MY LITTLE GIRL HAD JUST SUCH A DOLL—IS IT POSSIBLE THAT YOU—?"

THE MUSIC MASTER

BY

CHARLES KLEIN

NOVELIZED FROM THE
PLAY AS PRODUCED BY
DAVID BELASCO

ILLUSTRATED WITH SCENES
FROM THE PHOTOPLAY
A WILLIAM FOX PRODUCTION

NEW YORK
GROSSET & DUNLAP
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1909
By Dodd, Mead & Company
All rights reserved
Published, March, 1909

THIS BOOK IS DEDICATED
TO
David Warfield, Artist
BY THE AUTHOR

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations

[ "My little girl had just such a doll—is it possible
that you—?" . . . . . . . . . Frontispiece ]

[ The "music master" can no longer pay rent for the piano. ]

[ Anton Von Barwig is compelled to pawn his favourite violin. ]

[ Beverly brings Hélène a wedding gift. ]

[ Anton learns that his newly found daughter is to be married. ]

[ Hélène prepares her trousseau. ]

[ "I want you to come with us?" ]

[ Hélène and Beverly find love's haven. ]

Chapter One

Anton Von Barwig rapped on the conductor's desk for silence and laid down his baton. The hundred men constituting the Leipsic Philharmonic Orchestra stopped playing as if by magic, and those who looked up from their music saw in their leader's face, for the first time in their three years' experience under his direction, a pained expression of helplessness.

"Either I can't hear you this morning, or the first violins are late in attacking and the wood wind drags—drags—drags."

"What's the matter? We've played this a hundred times," growled Karlschmidt, the bass clarionet player, to Poons, the Dutch horn soloist, who sat at the desk next to him.

Karlschmidt was a socialist, a student of Karl Marx, and took more interest in communism than in his allotted share of the score of Isolde's Liebestodt. Indeed, nearly all the men were interested in something other than the occupation which afforded them a living. For them the pleasure of music had died in the business of attaining accuracy.

"What did he say?" asked Poons, losing Von Barwig's next remark in trying to hear what Karlschmidt was mumbling.

"He said it's his own fault," whispered the second flute.

"He's quite right," assented Karlschmidt.

"Hush, hush!" came from one or two others. Von Barwig was addressing the men again, and they wanted to hear.

"Let's play; cut the speeches out," growled Karlschmidt. "For God's sake, what's he saying now?"

"Damn it! How can we hear when you won't keep quiet?" blurted a Germanised Englishman who had an engagement at the old Rathaus and wanted to get away.

"We're dismissed," said Poons, who couldn't hear. But the men at the violin desks down front were rising and putting away their instruments, and the others were slowly following their example.

Karlschmidt's face expanded into a smile; the prospect of avoiding the unpleasant grind of rehearsal had restored him to good humour. The lines of men were now breaking up into knots; bows were being loosened, violins put into cases and brass instruments into bags, while laughing and chatting became general. Poons looked at Von Barwig, who still stood on the small dais, staring out into space, and he saw that something was the matter. He loved Von Barwig; for years before, when hard times had sent him over the border from Amsterdam toward the German music centres, Von Barwig had extended him a helping hand, indeed had almost kept him from starving until he got an engagement in one of the minor Dresden theatres; Poons was grateful; and gratitude is a form of love that lies deeper than mere sympathy.

"Can I do something for you, Anton?" he asked a few moments later, as he stood at the conductor's desk. Von Barwig did not answer; and with his round face, and smiling eyes glancing appealingly at his conductor, Poons stood waiting like a little dog that patiently wags his tall in hope of his master's recognition. Presently he shook his head gravely and sighed. Surely something was wrong, for Anton was not himself. Never before had he stopped rehearsal and dismissed his men on the morning preceding a concert night, and, moreover, the night of the first performance of a new symphony—Von Barwig's own work.

The men were rapidly disappearing, and the Gewandhaus concert platform was almost empty. Von Barwig seemed deeply interested in watching his men carry off their instruments, and yet, when Poons looked closely into his face, he knew that the leader did not see that which he was apparently watching so closely.

"Shall I wait for you, Anton?" ventured Poons finally. As if to remind Von Barwig of his presence, he touched him gently on the arm. Von Barwig started. A look of recognition came into his eye, and with it a smile that metamorphosed his homely, almost ugly face into something beyond mere beauty; a smile that transformed a somewhat commonplace personality into an appealing and compelling individuality. There is no need to describe the delicate, sensitive, rugged countenance, which, when he smiled, radiated love and sympathy for his fellow-beings and made him what is ordinarily described as magnetic.

Poons caught this smile, and his own broad grin deepened as he recognised his old friend again.

"Come, let's go," Von Barwig said briefly; and without another word they walked out of the Gewandhaus. They passed the statue of Mendelssohn erected in front of the building, walking down the August Platz as far as the University. Poons noticed that unusual things were happening that morning. First, his friend was walking rapidly, so rapidly that he himself almost had to trot to keep up with him; second, he was muttering to himself, a most unusual thing for Von Barwig to do; third, every now and then a look of intense hatred beclouded his face; and last, he was not talking over the events of the morning with his friend. Furthermore, so engrossed was Von Barwig in his own thoughts that he passed Schumann's monument without lifting his hat, and Bismarck's monument without shaking his fist; and these two things Von Barwig had done, day in and day out, ever since Poons had known him. Finally, when at the Thomas Kirche Poons ventured to ask, "Where are we going?" Von Barwig stopped short in the middle of the street he was crossing.

"That's it, that's it!" he said excitedly; "where am I going? Where am I going?" and he looked at Poons as if he expected that his frightened friend would answer his question.

Poons took his friend's arm and pushed him out of the road on to the pavement just in time to save him from being grazed by a cab which rapidly whisked by them. Then he stopped and laid his hand on Von Barwig's shoulder.

"What's the matter, Anton?" he said soothingly. "Can't you tell me? In God's name, what has happened?"

Anton looked at Poons. The unexpected had happened; his devoted follower had dared to question him. The shock almost awoke him to a sense of his surroundings, and the ghost of his old smile stole over his face as he shook his head slowly.

"That's it!" he gasped. "I don't know! I don't know! It's the uncertainty that is killing me. By God, August, I'll kill him! I'll kill him!" And then Poons understood.

They walked on in silence, whither neither of them knew. It was now Poons's turn to walk faster than his companion and to mutter to himself. His face had lost its grin, and he was no longer conscious of his immediate surroundings. After they had passed Auerbach's cellar he could contain himself no longer, and an explosion took place. He stopped Von Barwig in the middle of the pavement, grabbing him by the arm, and in a hoarse, gutteral voice, choked with emotion, shouted, "Anton! Anton!"

Von Barwig looked at his friend in mute surprise. Poons, oblivious of the bystanders—who were looking to see why a man should shout so unnecessarily—went on:

"By God, Anton, I kill him, too!"

This appealed to Von Barwig's sense of humour, and he burst Into laughter, a laughter perilously near to tears. It never occurred to him to ask Poons what he knew or what he had heard. The fact that what was preying on his mind, his carefully guarded secret, was common property did not strike him at that moment. He merely thought that his friend was agreeing with him in the sentiment of killing "some one" as he agreed with him in all matters of music, philosophy and art. In Anton Von Barwig's condition of mind at that moment, had it occurred to him that Poons knew the awful fact that was confronting him, he would have taken him by the throat and then and there compelled him to confess what he knew or thought he knew; but he walked on in silence, followed by his devoted friend.

They turned up a small side street of the August Platz and stopped in front of the house where Anton Von Barwig lived. It was the centre of a row of large modern apartment houses where lived for the most part the art world of Leipsic, and this world included beside the rich, professional element, the wealthy publishers, of whom in this important centre of Germany there were a large number. As Von Barwig stood waiting for Poons to enter with him, he noticed Poons's outstretched hand.

"Aren't you coming in?" he asked. Poons shook his head.

"I'd better not," he said simply.

"Why not?" asked Von Barwig.

"Because," Poons faltered. He did not want to tell his friend that at such times as these it is better for a man to be alone with his thoughts.

"Why not?" cried Von Barwig; but Poons did not speak. He stood like some dumb animal awaiting his master's lash; and then Von Barwig knew that Poons knew.

"Come!" said Von Barwig in a low, hard voice, with such firmness and determination that Poons, in spite of himself, was compelled to go forward. Silently they walked up three flights, neither of them noticing the salute of the porter as they passed him. Anton took out his keys and opened a door which led into a magnificently furnished musical studio, the largest apartment in Koenigs Strasse. It was here that he and Madam Elene Von Barwig, his wife, held their musical receptions and entertained the great German and foreign artists that came to Leipsic. These receptions were famous affairs, and invitations were eagerly sought, not only by musical celebrities, but by such of the nobility as happened to be in town. Members of the royal family had been known to grace more than one of these affairs; for though a conductor of the Leipsic Philharmonic is not necessarily a rich man, his social position is unquestioned.

Perhaps some such fleeting thoughts as these—glimpses into the past like those of a drowning man—came into Anton Von Barwig's consciousness as he stepped quietly to the door leading from the reception-room and studio and passed into the corridor toward the living apartments. He listened intently; but hearing nothing, closed the door quietly, and somewhat to Poons's alarm turned the key in the lock.

"Now tell me," he demanded, in a voice that was as strange as it was determined; "what do you know? Sit down." This last was a direct command.

Poons felt that nothing was to be gained by silence. He had, so to speak, put his foot in it by allowing himself, through sympathy in his friend's affairs, to betray the fact that he knew what was troubling him. He felt, therefore, that by making a clean breast of it, he might not only mitigate Von Barwig's sufferings but enable him to see what the world, or at least the world of Leipsic, had seen for some time.

Poons was not a rapid thinker, but these thoughts flashed through his mind in less time than it took him to obey Von Barwig. He sat down in the chair indicated by his friend and tried to collect his thoughts.

"What do you know?" repeated Von Barwig. Poons moistened his lips with his tongue, as if to enable him to speak; but words would not come. He loved Anton; he knew that what he had to say would make him suffer; and that he could not bear to see. He tried to speak, faltered "I cannot, I cannot!" and burst into tears. Von Barwig walked up to the window and gazed steadily into the street.

"It's more serious than I thought," he said after a few moments' pause, giving Poons time to recover in some slight degree from his emotion. "It is serious, eh?"

"Yes," assented Poons, relieved that Anton's question required only a monosyllable for an answer.

"Very serious, eh?" asked Von Barwig, steeling himself for the answer he expected.

"Yes, I think so," nodded Poons, gulping down a sob.

"The worst, eh?"

"God, you know what scandal-mongers are; what people say—when they do say—how they talk! They have no mercy, no brains, no sense! What is a woman's reputation to them? They repeat, they—they—the wretches—the murderers—" Poons seemed to be trying to shift the blame on a number of people; it was easier for him to generalise at this moment than to answer his questioner straightforwardly.

"Do they say that my wife—that Madam Von Barwig neglects her home?"

"Yes."

"And her child?"

"No, no!" eagerly interrupted Poons, quite joyous at being able to deny something at last.

"Do they say that she—neglects me, that she doesn't care for me, that—" Von Barwig spoke now with an effort; "that she no longer loves me?"

Poons nodded affirmatively. He was summoning up all his courage for the question that he knew was coming; and it came.

"Do they say, do they mention—his name?"

Poons again nodded affirmatively.

"Ahlmann?"

"Yes."

Von Barwig held his breath for a moment; then literally heaved a sigh. What he most feared had indeed come upon him. The world knew; his heart was on his sleeve for daws to peck at.

"How long have you known this?"

Poons hung his head, he could not answer. He was longing to throw his arms around his friend's neck and cry on his shoulder; and he could think of nothing to say but "Poor Anton! Poor Anton!"

"Don't pity me, damn you! don't pity me!" burst out Von Barwig. "And don't sit there bleating like a lost sheep of Israel! I'm not a woman—tears are no panacea for suffering like mine. Put the world back five years, restore for me the past few months; then I could live life over again, then I could see and know and act differently. Don't sit there like a wailing widow, moaning and moping over other people's miseries! That isn't sympathy, that's weakness! If you want to help me, tell me to be a man, to face my troubles like a man; don't cry like a baby!"

"That's right," assented Poons, "go on; it does you good. Give it to me, I deserve it!"

"Poor old Poons, you do your best! Ah, your love does me good, old friend; but there's hell to face! She threatens to leave me, to leave me because I refused to allow him to come here. I've warned him! And if he shows his face in Leipsic again, I'll kill him! Look!" Von Barwig felt in his inner pocket. "Now you can understand why I couldn't hold the men together at rehearsal this morning. My mind was with her, with him. Ha! the mother of my little girl, my little Hélène! That's the pity of it, Poons, that's the pity of it!" and now it was Von Barwig's turn to show weakness. "That's what I can't understand. A woman's love for a man, yes, it can go here, there, anywhere; but the mother instinct, how can that change?"

"Doesn't she love her little girl any more?" asked Poons in simple astonishment.

"She loves him," said Anton. "Can there be room for the mother love with such love as he inspires?"

He looked at the letter in his hand and passed it to Poons. "This morning, just as I was leaving for rehearsal, the servant handed me this. My little girl is all I have left now." His voice choked with emotion as he turned once more toward the window.

At the sight of his friend's suffering Poons could no longer contain himself, and he fairly blubbered as he read the following:

"DEAR ANTON: Henry Ahlmann is in Leipsic and I have seen him. I cannot live a lie, so I am going away with him. Believe me, it is better so; I feel that you can never forgive me and that we can never again be happy together. Kiss my darling Hélène for me, and oh, Anton, don't tell the little one her unhappy mother's miserable history until she is old enough to understand!
"ELENE VON BARWIG."

"Well, that's conclusive, isn't it?" asked Von Barwig grimly as soon as Poons finished reading.

Poons's voice failed him. Hot, scalding tears were fairly raining down his cheeks as the letter fell out of his trembling hands and fluttered to the floor.

"Well, what's to be done; what's to be done?"

"Then she has gone?"

Von Barwig nodded. "I suppose so! I don't know, I can't tell," he said helplessly. "I didn't try to stop her," he went on after a pause. "What's the use, to what end? Oh, I don't want the entire blame to rest on her shoulders! A beautiful woman, twenty-five years of age, a pampered, petted, spoiled child, craving constant excitement; and he, a handsome, young American, rich and romantic. I, as you know, am a mature man of forty, devoted to an art in which she takes little interest. I introduced them. Ha! that's the irony of it! I brought them together, I left them together, I—it's my fault, Poons—my fault! I neglected her for my work. With me, all was music: the compositions, the rehearsal, the concert, the pupil, the conservatory, the opera, the singer, the player. He used to take her to my concerts; and I,—fool, fool—encouraged him, for it gave me more time to devote to my art. An artist is a selfish dog! He must be, or there is no art. What could I expect? I am fifteen years older than she; ugly——"

"No, no!" blurted out Poons.

"Misshapen, undersized——"

"No, no!"

"My friend can lie, but my looking-glass doesn't. I know, I know! God, how will it all end? How will it all end?"

At this point the door shook a little as though some one were trying to get in.

"She's come back!" almost gasped Anton, and walking firmly to the door, he unlocked and opened it. As he did so, a little fairy creature between three and four years of age, with golden, flaxen curls and blue eyes, bounded into the room, calling out, "Papa! Papa! Where is oo? Where is oo?"

Von Barwig was on his knees in a moment, and the child threw her left arm around his neck and hugged him so tightly that the little doll she held in her right hand was almost crushed between them.

"Hélène, Hélène! my poor, motherless little baby!" And then for the first time Von Barwig gave way to tears.

"We are alone, alone, alone! Oh, God! Oh, God!" he sobbed as he rocked from side to side in his agony. Poons crept softly out of the room and closed the door gently after him.

Chapter Two

It was past seven o'clock that evening when Poons returned to Von Barwig's apartment on his way to the Gewandhaus concert. His old overcoat buttoned tightly over his well-worn dress suit covered a palpitating heart; for Poons was afraid. A few minutes before, when he had kissed his motherly wife good-bye and told her to take good, extra good care of their little son August, she had noticed that his hand was trembling. And when he tried to account for his nervous condition by reminding her that Anton Von Barwig's new symphony was to be played that night and that a member of the Royal family was to be present on the occasion, she had shaken her head gravely, accusing him of being a foolish, timid old boy. It needed all the courage he could muster up to enable him to ring the door-bell of Von Barwig's dwelling. There was such a death-like stillness that Poons thought for a moment no one was there; he dreaded he knew not what. As he stood listening to the silence, he thought he heard a child's laughter, and he sighed in relief. The servant came to the door, a sleepy-eyed German mädchen as strong as an ox and nearly as stupid. "Oh, it's Herr Poons," she said. "Come in. I tell Herr Von Barwig——"

"Is he—is he? How is he?" faltered Poons, much relieved that the girl showed no evidence of acquaintance with the real condition of her master's mind.

"I tell him," repeated the girl stolidly, without answering his question.

Closing the hall door, she ushered him into the studio and left him standing there. Poons looked at his watch; it was a quarter past seven. He still had fifteen minutes to spare before the concert engagement, which began at eight o'clock, called him to the Gewandhaus.

While he was wondering what he could say to his friend, the servant opened the door leading to the living apartments of the family and intimated that he should come in. Poons passed through a magnificently furnished drawing-room and library, and thence into the dining-room.

"This way," said the girl, opening the dining-room door, beyond which was a passage leading to the kitchen and bedrooms. Poons looked surprised, and the girl hastened to say:

"Herr Von Barwig is in the nursery."

"Ah, of course," nodded Poons, as he followed her.

Not very observant usually, Poons noticed that the dinner table was set for two persons. Both places were undisturbed and the food was untouched.

"He has not eaten," thought Poons. "Of course she is not here! Oh, God! that is the tragedy of it! The empty chair, always the empty chair—it is like death!"

As the nursery door opened Poons heard the sound of voices and laughter and, to his utter astonishment, saw his friend Von Barwig on the floor playing with little Hélène's dolls' house. Hélène was shrieking with childish laughter because Von Barwig pretended to be angry with one of her dolls which would not eat the cake he tried to make it swallow.

As Von Barwig saw his friend, a look of intense pain crossed his face, but he forced himself to smile and say:

"Come in, Herr Doctor Poons, and mend this little girl's eye. See, I've given her cake to eat, but it won't do her eye any good!"

Hélène laughed gleefully at the idea of cake being good for a broken eye.

"Good gracious, how did the eye fall out?" said Dr. Poons, shaking his head gravely.

"She fell down and I kicked it," lisped the little one. "I kicked it," she laughed, unconscious that she had committed an unprovoked assault on her plaything. "Mend it; oh, please mend it!"

Poons shook his head gravely. The child mistook this for a confession of his inability to do what she wished.

"Mamma 'll fix it when she comes home. She won't be long, will she?" said the child, somewhat tearfully. She had asked the question many times, and her father seemed unable to answer her.

"I am trying to make her forget," said Anton savagely to Poons, in answer to his look of painful inquiry. "She must forget soon; I've been with her ever since you left me this morning." His arm stole around the child's neck, and drawing her to him gently, he kissed her again and again with such sad, lingering tenderness that the ever-ready tears welled up into Poons's eyes, and he turned his head to conceal them. The child struggled to free herself.

"Papa so rough, eh? Well, he won't be, or Herr Poons will beat him, eh?"

"Surely," assented Poons.

"Papa will be so gentle and so kind," went on Von Barwig tenderly. "He'll love his little girl as no little girl in this wide, wide world was ever loved before, eh?"

Little Hélène did not understand, and as she had nothing at this precise moment to occupy her attention, she answered him by asking the one question that absorbed her mind, "Where's mamma?"

Von Barwig and Poons looked at each other helplessly. Apart from the tragedy of two men trying to comfort a little child that had lost its parent, there remained in Von Barwig's mind a sense of the utter inability of the masculine individuality to fill the place of mother in the child's heart. In after years, Von Barwig always remembered the sinking sensation he felt when this fact came home to him in full force.

"Well, one thing," said Anton, as he swallowed something that came in his throat and threatened to choke him, "one thing, she was kind to the little one; the was a kind mother, eh?"

"Kind? kind?" began Poons fiercely. "Is it kind to——"

Von Barwig silenced him with a look.

"Yes, she was a good mother," he admitted conciliatingly. "But, by God, if we don't go we shall be late! Phew!" he whistled as he looked at his watch, "half past seven." Von Barwig sat still for a moment.

"Half past seven? Yes." Then, as if it were slowly dawning upon him that he had duties, he arose, dusting his knees mechanically.

"Half past seven, yes. It begins at eight, eh? and I must dress. Yes, I suppose I must dress!"

The little girl was now putting her dolls back into the dolls' house; the doorway was blocked up and she was pushing one through a broken window in the little house as Von Barwig caught her in his arms and caressed her.

"How can I leave her? Good God, how can I leave her?" he groaned. He stroked her face, her hair, and kissed her again and again.

"She's all I have, all; she's all I want. I won't go to-night, I won't leave her, do you hear? Let Ruhlmeyer conduct to-night. I can't go, I can't leave her alone! Suppose something were to happen to her?"

"But you must go!" said Poons firmly; desperation had given him courage. "You must go!"

Von Barwig looked at him in surprise; Poons's tone sobered him a little.

"For her sake you must work," went on Poons, gaining courage as he saw that his words had an effect on his friend.

"Yes, I must work," assented Von Barwig, feeling the force of Poons's words. "Shall I go, little Hélène, my little darling? Shall I go?"

"Yes, go and tell mamma to come," was the little one's reply.

"Come, hurry, Anton! You must dress, you have barely five minutes: five to dress, ten to get to the Gewandhaus."

"Ha! they can wait!" said Von Barwig grimly. "Prince Mecklenburg Strelitz, the Kaiser, all Germany can wait, while I mend the strings of my heart!"

The nurse-maid came in and suggested that it was time to put little Fräulein to bed. Poons looked at her closely; her eyelids were red, for she had been crying.

"Take good care of the little Fräulein," said Von Barwig as he handed her over to the maid. It was long past her bedtime, and the little child had almost fallen asleep in her father's arms.

"Let me kiss her just once more; I won't wake her up!"

The girl burst into tears as Von Barwig bent over the child, kissing her tenderly; then she hurried into the next room with her precious charge.

"She knows?" inquired Poons.

"Yes," nodded Von Barwig; and then, with a sigh, "She knows."

Five minutes later, Von Barwig, accompanied by Poons, left the house and hurriedly took a cab to the concert hall.

Chapter Three

It was noticed by more than one member of the Leipsic Philharmonic Orchestra that Herr Director Von Barwig was in unusually high spirits that evening. Many attributed it to the fact that he was nervous because of the first production of his new symphony. Karlschmidt hinted to his deskmate that Von Barwig was nervous and was trying to conceal it by pretending to be delighted with everything and everybody. This was probably true in a measure; at all events, when he came into the artists' room at the Gewandhaus at about five minutes to eight, he shook hands with everybody, joked with his men, and talked almost incessantly, as if he wanted to keep at high pressure. Poons watched him closely. Von Barwig was unusually pale, and as he slapped his concert meister on the back Poons noticed that, though his face wore a smile, his lips quivered.

"For heaven's sake," he heard him say to the leader of the second violins, "don't play the pizzicato in the third movement as if you were picking up eggs!" Poons rejoiced that his friend could forget so easily.

It was, however, when Von Barwig walked out on the platform to the dais, bowed to the immense audience, and turned to his men, that the deadly pallor of his face was most apparent. Some of the audience noticed it as he acknowledged the applause he received. There was not a tremor of hand or muscle, not an undecided movement; merely a deadly pallor of countenance as if he no longer had blood in his veins, but ice. The men felt the absence of the compelling force that always emanated from him, that seemed to ooze from his baton; that psychic something that compelled the player to feel as his director felt—the force we call magnetism. The firmness of mouth showed that the determination to dominate was still there, but the absence of that mental power left only the automatic rhythm and swing, sans heart, sans soul, sans feeling. The beat was the beat of the finely trained academic conductor, but the genius of it was gone. The ghost of a departed Von Barwig was beating time for the Von Barwig that had lived and died that night.

Perhaps the audience did not feel this as much as the men did, for they applauded heartily at the end of the opening number. They did notice that Von Barwig did not acknowledge their applause and seemed to be oblivious of their presence. The fact that an ultra-fashionable audience was present, including a prince and princess of the Royal Family, and the élite of Leipsic, to say nothing of the American Ambassador, Mr. Cruger, apparently did not affect Von Barwig in the least. This appealed very much to the democratic instinct of Mr. Cruger, and at the end of the first part he asked his friend, Prince Holberg-Meckstein, to present him to the conductor.

"I will present him to you," said his highness, carefully readjusting the pronouns; and he sent for Von Barwig.

"A curious personality!" remarked Mr. Cruger to the prince as Von Barwig bowed himself out of the box a few minutes later.

"Yes, and a fine musician," said the prince. "But he's not at his best to-night."

As Von Barwig passed through the artists' room, Poons approached him. Anton motioned him away as if to say, "Don't speak to me," and Poons walked sadly away.

The second part of the programme was to begin with Von Barwig's latest work.

"Quick, put the score of the symphony on my desk," he said to the librarian, who happened to be passing at the moment. "I intended to conduct it from memory; but I have forgotten."

As the librarian placed the score on the conductor's desk, he thought it strange that a man who had been rehearsing from memory for weeks should so suddenly forget.

Von Barwig opened the score a few moments later, raised his baton, and the wood wind began the new work. He conducted as mechanically as before, for his dead heart could pump no enthusiasm into his work, and the audience suddenly felt a sense of disappointment. But after the first few passages had been played the leader lost his self-consciousness and forgot his surroundings. He began to feel the music, to compose it again, and the mechanism of the conductor was lost in the inspiration of the composer. It was a beautiful movement marked andante sostenuto—pathos itself, and Von Barwig drew from his men their very souls, forcing them in turn to draw out of their strings all the suffering he had been going through for the past few days. Then a curious psychic phenomenon took place. Von Barwig completely forgot himself, his audience, his orchestra; he was living in his music, and the music took him back to the precise moment of inspiration. Once more he was in his studio, seated at his work table, looking up from his score into the face of his beloved Elene. She was smiling at him, encouraging him to go on with his work, the work that she had prophesied would make him famous and her the happiest of women. This dream had almost the appearance of reality to Von Barwig. Indeed it was real, as real as reality itself, until the wild applause of an enthusiastic audience awoke him alike to the consciousness of the success of his work and the hopeless misery of his present position; his success in his music only accentuating the failure his life had become.

The playing of this movement made such an impression that Von Barwig was compelled again and again to acknowledge the plaudits of the audience. Indeed, they wanted him to repeat it, but this he steadfastly refused to do. There was a slight intermission between the playing of the first and the second parts of the symphony, and during this pause the librarian handed a note to Von Barwig, whispering to him, "You must read it. The woman is outside in hysterics."

"What woman?" demanded Von Barwig, his thoughts reverting to his wife.

Trembling and fearful of he knew not what the leader read the following hastily scrawled note:

"Come at once. The Fräulein is gone. She has been stolen away. Please come. GRETCHEN."

Von Barwig crushed the note in his hand and looked about helplessly, almost lurching forward in his bewilderment.

"Hélène stolen? What did it mean?" He could not understand.

He knew instinctively it was time to go on with the next movement, and that he must make an effort for the sake of others. Already there were signs of impatience in the great audience. Slowly he stepped upon the dais, steadying himself by means of the music-stand. He raised his baton, his men played the opening bars, and as they did so the full meaning of the awful news he had just read flashed upon him. He realised suddenly that his men were no longer with him; the first violin looked up at him panic stricken. He sawed the air wildly as he felt the great audience surging around him and his orchestra swaying to and fro. Then he reeled, stumbled, clutching at the music-stand for support; and fell face forward upon the floor.

Some six weeks later loving friends had gently nursed him back to life and reason. It was slow work, but Von Barwig weathered the point of death and sailed slowly into the harbour of life. As he grew stronger, he realised by degrees all that had happened. One day he called for his beloved Poons, but they did not dare to tell him that his faithful friend was dead; the shock of that night had brought on a stroke from which Poons never recovered. When they did tell him long afterward, he only smiled, shook his head sadly, and said, "Why not? All is gone! Why should my old friend remain to me?"

When Von Barwig was strong enough he took the train to Berlin and consulted with the police authorities in reference to the whereabouts of his lost wife and child; but they had left no trace behind them except an indication that they had passed through Paris on their way to some unknown destination. He called on Mr. Cruger, the American Ambassador, who could throw no light on the subject. A search of the steamship lists failed to reveal their whereabouts; and at last, though Anton Von Barwig felt that they were hopelessly lost to him, he returned to Leipsic, more than ever determined to find them. It was the only idea he had: to find them—to find them—to find them. His other thoughts were without stimulating power—irresolute, vague, uncertain. This one idea grew and grew until it became an obsession. He could no longer bear the sound of music; so it was no sacrifice to him to give up his profession. He hated the very streets he walked in, for had Elene not walked in them? He must find her; he must find his child. He could hear the little girl calling for him, he kept telling himself. It was his only duty, his only object and mission in life; so it became an ideal, a religion. But where to go, where to go? Finally, he made up his mind to leave Leipsic for Paris and start from there. One day, after living in Paris for some months, the idea occurred to him to go to America, the place of the man's birth. A week later he packed up all his effects and took passage on a steamer sailing for the port of New York.

Chapter Four

It was a hot August afternoon in New York, especially hot in the downtown districts, where it was damp and muggy, for it had been drizzling all the morning. The sun blazing behind the thin vapour-like clouds had converted the rain into steam, and the almost complete absence of a breeze had added to the personal discomfort of those who were compelled to be out of doors. Altogether it was a most uncomfortable afternoon; and the task of running up and down stairs and answering the front door-bell increased the misery of the maid of all work in Miss Husted's furnished-room establishment on Houston Street, near Second Avenue.

"Phew, ain't it a scorcher?" muttered the young woman as she mounted the kitchen stairs in answer to some visitor's second tug at the bell. She walked across the hall that led to the front door.

"Don't the dratted bell keep goin'," she went on as she tugged open the door, which the damp weather had caused to swell and stick to the door-jamb.

"Forgot your key?" she said as she recognised Signor Tagliafico, better known as Fico, the third-floor, hall-bedroom "guest," as Miss Husted insisted on calling her lodgers.

"Forgot your key?" repeated the girl, as the gentleman from Italy shrugged his shoulders and otherwise disported himself in an endeavour to convey to her the news that he had lost his key and felt extremely sorry to trouble her.

"Keys is made to open doors, not to forget," continued the girl, banging the door shut.

The noise brought Miss Husted out into the hall in less time than it takes to state the fact.

"What is it, Thurza?" she asked, showing evidence of being startled out of a doze by the noise.

"Third floor front forgot his key, Miss Houston," said the girl sulkily, as Fico trudged upstairs to his room.

"I wouldn't mind if he wasn't behind three weeks," said Miss Husted, who usually answered to the name of Miss Houston, chiefly because she lived in Houston Street.

"Well, I mind it," muttered the girl to herself, "whether he's behind or whether he isn't. It makes work for me, and there ain't enough time for regular, let alone extras," she went on, as she turned to go down stairs to the kitchen.

"Quite right," said Miss Husted, as she closed the door and returned to her room. Experience had taught her that it was useless to argue with Thurza. The girl was open to impression, but not to explanation; once an idea found lodgment in her brain it stayed there, despite all argument to the contrary. It was most mortifying to Miss Husted that Thurza had such deep-rooted prejudices against every guest that found his way into her establishment. Lodgers made work; the more lodgers the more work; ergo, lodgers were enemies, is the way Thurza reasoned it out; and she resumed her occupation of cleaning silver (save the mark) almost as cheerfully as she had left it to answer the door-bell.

"Dear me," sighed Miss Husted, "how hard it is to get help and how much harder it is to keep them! Back again already? Why, Jenny, you must have flown!" this last to a rather pretty little girl who had just entered the door.

"Yes, aunt," replied the girl, "I knew Thurza must be busy—so—I—I hurried."

"I can see that," her aunt said reprovingly, "you are dripping wet; you shouldn't walk so fast in this hot weather."

Jenny was a thoughtful child. She had lived rather an unhappy existence with her parents, for her father had deserted her mother when she was three years old and after her mother's death she had come to her aunt "for a few days" until a home could be found for her. The few days were over some years before, for Miss Husted loved the child far too well to let her go, and gladly made a home for her. Jenny loved her aunt and stayed on. Curiously enough, not a word had ever been spoken between them on the subject, and the little girl just fitted in, adapting herself to Aunt Sarah's ways. Now this process of adjustment was by no means an easy accomplishment, for Aunt Sarah had no sense of time. She thought and felt herself to be just as young as she was years and years ago.

Her looking-glass must have given her several hard jolts, but she either believed a looking-glass to be an illusion or ignored its evidence altogether; for though it showed her the face of a woman near the danger line of fifty, she insisted on considering herself as in the neighbourhood of thirty. She carried herself with the dignity of a duchess; that is, a conventional duchess, and talked habitually with the hauteur and elegance of a stage queen. Her kingdom was the Houston Street establishment, her guests were her subjects, her aristocracy were the foreign gentlemen who occupied rooms in the various parts of her house, mostly hall bedrooms. She doted on fashion, refinement, pungent perfumery and expensive flowers; anything that to her mind suggested social grandeur appealed intensely to her. Even the old house, now situated in an exceedingly unfashionable quarter, held a place in her affections because years before it had been a part of fashionable New York, and she felt quite proud because she was known as Miss Houston of Houston Street. The name suggested a title, and a title of all things was dear to her heart. Perhaps her love for Jenny was stronger because her father was supposed—by his unfortunate wife at least—to have been the scion of a proud and aristocratic family, who had not been too proud, however, to leave her to starve. Altogether, Miss Husted was an exceedingly romantic, high-strung, middle-aged spinster, miles and miles above her station in life, whose heart and purse were open to any foreigner who had discernment enough to see her weakness and tact enough to pander to it by hinting at his noble lineage. This love of things and beings aristocratic was more than a weakness. It was a disease, for it kept poor a good soul, who otherwise might have been, if not well-to-do, at least fairly prosperous.

Jenny, young as she was, knew all this. She knew that Fico, or Signor Tagliafico, was a struggling musician and not an artist in any sense of the word. She knew he was an ordinary Italian fiddler who preferred to fiddle for food rather than to work manually for it. And yet her aunt had confided to her that she was sure he was a count, because one day Miss Husted had asked him the question, and the man, not quite understanding, had smiled and shrugged his shoulders. Still, he had not denied it, so thenceforth was known as Count Fico.

And Pinac, the gentleman who occupied the other back room next to that of Fico? Miss Husted was sure that he was a descendant of the noble refugees from France, who emigrated during the Reign of Terror in the French Revolution. The romance of this appealed highly to her. Monsieur Pinac was always silent when questioned on this point, but Miss Husted was much interested. His silence surely meant something, and besides, he looked every inch a nobleman with his fashionably cut Van Dyck beard. There was a picture of the Duc de Guise in one of the bedrooms—Heavens only knows where Miss Husted got it, but there it was—and pointing to it with great pride, she defied Monsieur Pinac to deny his relationship to the defunct duke. Pinac did not take the trouble to deny it! As a matter of fact, he was simply an ordinary musician who continued to follow his profession because it paid him better than any other business he could embark in. Music is often the line of easiest resistance, and many there be that slide down its graceful curves. In more senses than one, it is easier to play than to work. But when Miss Husted conferred a patent of nobility on a foreign gentleman, were he an Italian organ-grinder or a French waiter, that title stood, his own protest to the contrary notwithstanding. In this particular view-point Miss Husted was completely opposite to her maid of all work.

Thurza's mental attitude was the socialistic slant that made for the destruction of aristocracy; Miss Husted's system created one of her own. To Thurza foreigners were either "dagoes" or "Dutch"; to Miss Husted they were either "gentlemen" or "noblemen" or both. In this way, perhaps, the balance of harmony was restored in Houston Mansion, as Miss Husted dearly loved to call her home. There was some foundation for believing that the name Houston Mansion was painted on the glass over the front door, but it was so worn that no one could decipher it.

A violent ring at the door-bell interrupted the conversation between Miss Husted and her niece.

"They'll break the bell if they're not careful," remarked the elder lady, arranging her ringlets in the event that it might be some one to see her.

"It's a lady," whispered Jenny to her aunt a few moments later. "She wants a room."

Miss Husted sniffed. "I don't like ladies; they're twice the trouble that gentlemen are, and—I don't know—I don't like 'em. Ladies looking for furnished rooms always have a history—and a past; I don't like 'em."

Jenny nodded without in the least understanding her aunt. She had heard this before, but she knew it was a peculiarity of Miss Husted always to say the same thing under the same circumstances, whether the occasion called for it or not.

"Shall I ask her in, or will you come out into the hall?" went on the child.

"Ask her kindly to step into the reception-room," said her aunt, kicking a feather duster under the sofa and generally tidying up a bit.

A large, stout person of uncertain age stood in the doorway.

"Is this the reception-room?" asked the lady, fixing her glasses and looking about her as if quite prepared to disbelieve any statement Miss Husted was about to make. That lady, much offended, drew herself up stiffly.

"Yes, this is the reception-room," she said, in a tone intended to be frigidly polite. "May I inquire to what am I indebted for the honour of this visit?"

The fat lady sniffed contemptuously and sat down.

"I think it's the sign 'Furnished Rooms' that can claim the honour," she said simply.

"Sit down, Jenny, and stop fidgeting," Miss Husted snapped out, ignoring the fat lady's attempt at smartness.

"I want a room if you have one vacant. My name is Mangenborn."

"Top floor?" inquired Miss Husted.

"I suppose you think a lady of my avoirdupois ought to live on the top floor so as to have plenty of exercise, eh?" inquired Mrs. Mangenborn with an attempt at humour. Then, without waiting for a reply, she went on:

"Well, you've just guessed right! What kind of people do you have in this house?"

"My guests are artists and gentlemen."

"Which?" inquired the stout lady, and laughed; she saw the joke if Miss Husted didn't and was good natured enough to laugh even if it were her own. "Well, I'm an artist," she said after a pause.

"Indeed?" said Miss Husted, and there was a slight inflection of sarcasm in that lady's voice.

Mrs. Mangenborn was either deaf or did not notice it, for she went on unconsciously:

"Yes, I am an artist—a second-sight artist."

"Second-sight?"

"Yes; I tell fortunes, read the future——"

"Oh?" said Miss Husted, and that one word was enough to have driven an ordinary person out of the front door, convinced of being insulted, but Mrs. Mangenborn was not sensitive.

"I should like a cup of tea," she said simply. "It's a very hot day."

The magnificent coolness of this request fairly caught Miss Husted. This woman spoke like one accustomed to command; and much to Jenny's astonishment (she had been listening attentively) her aunt sent her to order tea for two.

Given a person who can tell fortunes, and another person on the lookout for one, a person who has infinite hope in the future, whose whole life indeed is in the future, and it doesn't take long to establish an entente cordiale. When Jenny came back a few minutes later, to her utter astonishment she saw the mysterious fat lady dealing cards to her aunt and talking of events past, present, and future; and her aunt chatting as pleasantly as if she had known the woman all her life.

"However can you tell that?" asked Miss Husted as she sipped her tea and cut the cards for the ninetieth time.

"Don't you see the king? That means a visitor!"

"Yes; but how did you know that my best first-floor rooms were to let?"

Mrs. Mangenborn shrugged her shoulders and smiled.

"That I cannot tell you; I can't even tell myself; it just comes to me."

She did not remind Miss Husted that the best rooms in most boarding establishments in that locality were usually to let, because the people who could afford to pay the price seldom wanted to live in that neighbourhood; but she did tell her several things that must have pleased her immensely, for in a short while, after Mrs. Mangenborn had disposed of a second cup of tea, that lady was fairly ensconced in a seven-dollar front room on the first floor for a price that did not exceed three dollars. However, if half her predictions came true, it would have been a fine bargain for Miss Husted or any other landlady to have her as a guest.

As Jenny confided to Thurza in the kitchen a few hours later:

"You'll see. If the ground-floor parlor and bedroom aren't let next week, the new lady in the first floor front will get notice to leave because she's told a fortune that won't come true, and aunt will be angry. She keeps her word and she always expects people to keep theirs."

"My fortune never came true," grunted Thurza as she lifted a tub of washing off the table.

"Jenny, Mrs. Mangenborn wants you to go on an errand for her," called her aunt downstairs.

"Thought she wasn't never goin' to take females in her home again," said Thurza, as Jenny went upstairs to obey her aunt's order.

As Jenny closed the front door gently on her way to the stores, she mused sadly on the fact that her aunt, and not Mrs. Mangenborn, had given her the money with which to make the purchases. She hoped with childish optimism that the second-sight lady would pay her back; the other guests never did. Jenny sighed as she thought how much easier it would be on rent-days if auntie didn't advance money.

The front-door bell rang so often that day that Thurza declared it rang when it didn't ring, and was equally positive that the dratted bell didn't ring when it did ring. At all events, when the bell had been nearly jerked out of its socket for the third time, Miss Husted poked her head out of Mrs. Mangenborn's room and shouted for Thurza to hurry up and answer it. As she received no answer, she went down a flight to the head of the kitchen stairs, and gave vent to a most unusual display of temper. This was brought on by the fact that Mrs. Mangenborn had just declared that never in all her born days (to say nothing of her unborn moments) had she seen such a wonderful display of good fortune as that which lay in the cards spread on the table before them; there was a marriage just as sure as death. Mrs. Mangenborn was proceeding to describe the masculine element in the marriage proposition, and Miss Husted was trying to think who it could be, when the bell rang for the third time just as Thurza's head made its appearance above the kitchen stairs. Miss Husted decided to forget her dignity and go to the door herself.

Outside stood a hack piled up with baggage, and on the doorstep, waiting patiently, stood a gentleman who bowed when the door was opened and asked gently with a foreign accent, if Miss Husted had a room for a studio and a bedroom. There was much bustle and excitement, a great deal of noise, and a still greater deal of confusion, but when it had subsided and the hackman had been paid three times as much as he was legally entitled to, the baggage was carried, or rather tumbled, into the rooms engaged by the gentleman with the foreign accent. Miss Husted rushed into Mrs. Mangenborn's room and breathlessly gasped that her fortune had come true, for the front parlor and bedroom were let at their full prices.

"Just think of it, Mrs. Mangborn," as Miss Husted insisted on calling her "guest," "just think of it, full price in summer!"

Mrs. Mangenborn rose to the occasion.

"Why not?" demanded she, as if offended by Miss Husted's enthusiasm, "why not? The cards never lie! How much do you say he is to pay?" she went on, as if Miss Husted had told her and she had forgotten the precise amount.

"Fourteen," replied Miss Husted, "and it's a good price."

"Not bad! But wait, you'll see that's only the beginning," and Mrs. Mangenborn mixed up the cards lying on the table oblivious of the fact that she had just shuffled Miss Husted's marital prospects out of existence.

"Oh, that's nothing," she hastened to say as she saw the expression of alarm on Miss Husted's face. "It'll come out again. It's in the cards and it must come out." Then she asked, "Who is he? What is he?"

"He's an artist of some sort, a fine, noble-looking old gentleman. German! oh such fine, elegant manners; to the manner born I am sure! A musician, I think; he had a violin with him."

Mrs. Mangenborn's nose elevated itself a little.

"No money in music! What's his name?" she asked.

"I don't know," said Miss Husted. "He gave me his card, but I was so flustered I didn't look at it."

She opened the reticule she always carried at her side, containing keys, recipes, receipts, almost everything that could be crowded into it, and after quite a little sifting and sorting she took out a card on which was inscribed:

"Herr Anton Von Barwig."

Chapter Five

There was a decided air of mystery about the new occupant of the parlor-floor suite, or at least so it appeared to Miss Husted of Houston Street. As a matter of fact, Herr Von Barwig minded his own business and evidently expected every one else to do likewise, for he kept his door and his ears closed to all polite advances during the first few days after his arrival at Houston Mansion. Despite Miss Husted's oft-repeated inquiries after the professor's health (the title had been conferred on him by virtue of his possessing a violin and on the arrival of a piano for his room), despite her endeavours to direct conversation into a channel which might lead to a discussion of his personal affairs, Herr Von Barwig remained tacit; hence a mystery attached itself to the personality of the professor. It is a curious fact that the one gentleman of genuine title that found his way into the Houston Street establishment was ruthlessly shorn of his right to distinction and dubbed professor, which sobriquet clung to him for many, many years. However, this did not annoy Herr Von Barwig, for he had not yet realised that in America every concertina and rag-time piano-player, as well as barber, corn-doctor, and teacher of the manly art of boxing, is entitled to the distinction of being called professor.

"The professor has beautiful manners—oh, such beautiful manners," confided Miss Husted to her new friend, Mrs. Mangenborn, about two weeks after his arrival. "Every time I speak he bows, and there's oh, such dignity, such grace in the bending of his head. How polite he is, too; he always says, 'No, madam, thank you;' or 'yes, if madam will be so kind,' and then he bows again and waits for me to go."

"Is that all he says?" inquired Mrs. Mangenborn. "I guess he knows how to keep his mouth shut, then! If you want a man to talk never ask him questions; men are a suspicious lot."

"Ah, but he is different," said Miss Husted. "He has such a sad, far-away, wistful look in his noble, dark eyes."

"That may be, but far-away looks don't pay any rent for you! You can't attach any importance to things like that. My first husband had a far-away look, and I haven't seen him for ten years. That Steinway grand the professor's got, did he hire it or buy it? A man's got to have money to support one of those instruments," went on Mrs. Mangenborn.

"I don't know," replied Miss Husted, who could not help thinking that her friend had a somewhat mercenary mind. "No one's been to see him, so he hasn't got it for his friends; his violin has a beautiful sound. Mr. Pinac tells me that it must be a rare old instrument."

The door-bell was heard ringing, but no one seemed to pay any attention to it until they heard the whistle that followed; then everybody bustled about. The postman always created a little excitement in Houston Street, and his arrival was the one occasion on which even Thurza hurried to the door. It was also the one occasion on which she need not have done so, for she invariably found Miss Rusted or one of the guests ahead of her.

"Registered letter for Herr Von Barwig."

"I'll take it to him," said Miss Husted sweetly.

"He's got to come and sign it himself," said the letter-carrier, shaking his head.

"Where's it from?" asked Mrs. Mangenborn, her head appearing over the bannisters.

Miss Husted looked at the letter-carrier inquiringly, but that official appeared not to have heard the question. At all events, he made no reply, and Miss Husted knocked on the professor's door.

"Come in."

Miss Husted opened the door.

"Ah, madam, what can I do for you?" said Von Barwig, rising from the table at which he was writing.

Miss Husted smiled sweetly. She noticed that he was writing music, so he must be a composer as well as a professor.

"Will you please come and sign for a registered letter?" she said.

"Ah, yes! I come at once."

He arose, held the door open for Miss Husted to pass out, bowing to her as she did so, and then coming into the hallway, fulfilled the postal requirements, totally unconscious that several pairs of eyes were watching the operation. The letter-carrier handed him two letters; one bearing the postmark Leipsic, the other that of New York.

Von Barwig returned to his room and read the following from a firm of stock brokers:

"Herr Anton Von Barwig.

"DEAR SIR: Pursuant to your instructions, we have sold the balance of the securities you left with us, but they have so depreciated in value during your seven years' absence from Leipsic, that we hesitated to sell them at their present market price. However, your instructions in regard to these securities were definite and we have obeyed them. Hoping this will meet with your satisfaction, we remain,

"Yours obediently,
"BERNSTEIN & DEUTSCH."

A draft on Drexel, Morgan's bank, for $1,000 dropped from Von Barwig's hand; he picked it up mechanically and looked at it.

"The last, the very last, barely one-tenth the price I paid for them," he thought; and sighing, put the draft into a pocketbook and deposited it in an inner pocket.

The other letter was from a detective agency in Eighth Street, and read as follows:

"DEAR SIR: Call on us at your earliest convenience. We have news.
"HATCH & BUCKLEY."

That was all, but it was enough to cause Von Barwig to change hastily from his slippers and dressing-gown to his shoes and hat; and to be out in the street in less than one minute after reading the letter.

"News, news, news! Good God, is it possible? No, no! I mustn't believe it; I dare not. Hélène, Hélène, my little girl! No, no, I won't; I won't!" and he read the letter again. "After all," he mused, "it may be news of a thousand little girls and yet not of mine. I beg your pardon, madam!" In turning from Houston Street into the Bowery, still reading the letter, he had bumped suddenly into a middle-aged lady, who retaliated by deliberately pushing him back, at the same time asking him a somewhat unnecessary question as to where he was going. Then she had gone on her way without waiting to hear his apology.

Hatch & Buckley's private detective agency, situated just off Broadway and Eighth Street, had a large office divided into several small offices. For some occult reason only one person could get in or out at a time, and this made confidential conversation a necessity rather than a matter of choice. The senior member of the firm was in when Von Barwig called. Be it understood at the beginning that this large, stout personage, who invariably spoke in a whisper, and referred so often to his partner, had no partner but a number of detectives on his staff, to whom he was wont to speak or whisper of as partner when discussing what they had ferreted out or left undiscovered. This man, fat, florid, and fifty, had been a central office detective for many years. After a time, being exceedingly useful in a political sense, he had been admitted to the inner circle at Tammany Hall and was at present one of the leading geniuses in that hallowed body of faithful public servitors.

"Come in, come in," said this gentleman urbanely as Von Barwig stood waiting as patiently as he could for the news he was so anxious to hear.

"Well, I think we've got something," he added.

Von Barwig said nothing; he waited to hear more.

"First of all, business before pleasure," said Mr. Hatch, and suited the action to the word by handing Von Barwig a bill for $556.84, for "services rendered."

"Yes, yes; but tell me the news!" faltered Von Barwig, without looking at the bill. "Have you found her? Tell me!" The pleading look in Von Barwig's face would have melted the heart of any ordinary scoundrel; but Mr. Hatch was no ordinary scoundrel.

"It's customary, Mr. Barwig," he said drily, "to settle one account before opening another."

Von Barwig looked at the bill that had been handed to him, saw the amount, shook his head pathetically, and smiled. "There must be some mistake," he said.

"My partner went to California on this clue and followed it clean to British Columbia; railroad fares alone amount to two fifty; there's hotel bills, carfare; there's salaries, office expenses, stamps; and then—there's me." If Mr. Hatch had put himself first there would have been little need to refer to the other items.

"There's the vouchers," he went on, pushing a lot of papers toward Von Barwig. "Everything O.K.'d; everything on the level, open and above board." He leaned back in his chair as if determined not to say another word until the matter was settled.

"Then you refuse to tell me any more until this is paid?"

"Not at all, not at all! I'd just as leave tell you right now; but it wouldn't be business, it wouldn't be business." He repeated this as if to impress his listener with the importance of the business aspect of the situation being well preserved.

"You are right; it is not business! It is life and death; it's my heart, my soul, my very existence! My little girl, my little Hélène is not business."

"I suppose not," assented the fat man, "not to you; but our end of it rests on a commercial basis. We've laid out the money and we're entitled to be paid for it."

"But I have paid you already so much! I cannot afford more. For years I have hunted high and low for my wife and child through city after city for thousands upon thousands of miles. At last I came to you, and there have been months and months of weary waiting, hunting false clues; disappointments upon disappointments."

"I know, I know," nodded the senior partner. "That's part of the game."

"I have spent with you nearly all the money I have, and nothing has come of it. Every now and then you raise my hopes by saying you have found her. Then, when the news comes, you ask for more money and when I have given it, it is again a false clue."

"That ain't our fault!" observed the stout gentleman. "My partner follows a clue, and you can't blame him if it don't turn out exactly the right one. This fellow Ahlmann is an eel; that's what he is, an eel! But I think we've got him now, I'm almost sure!"

"You think?" eagerly inquired Von Barwig.

"Well, of course there's nothing absolutely sure, but this is the last report he's sent in. Seems to me to pretty well cover the case, but it's been a hard job. This fellow Ahlmann has completely covered his tracks."

"The child? She—she lives?"

"Oh, yes; yes!"

"And the mother?"

"I think he's located them all. I can't tell you for sure till I read the report again."

Von Barwig, his hands trembling with excitement, wrote a cheque for the amount required, and with breathless impatience awaited the information as to the whereabouts of his lost wife and child.

"They're in Chicago," said Hatch, taking up the cheque and scanning it.

"Both of them?" asked Von Barwig in a hoarse whisper.

"Both of them," repeated Hatch, conveniently remembering the detail without reading the report. "George, bring me Mr. Bailey's telegram in the Barwig case," and when George, a smart young office boy, brought the required documents, he was quietly instructed by his employer to cash Von Barwig's cheque immediately.

"When will you go?" asked Mr. Hatch.

"As soon as possible."

"To-night?"

"Yes."

"Here's the address," and Mr. Hatch handed him a card. "You'll meet my partner there, 1120 State Avenue; he'll take you to the parties. Shall I get your railroad tickets?"

"No. I—I get them."

"It's twenty-six hours to Chicago; you'll need a Pullman ticket."

"Thank you; I get them."

"Well, just as you say. Good luck to you, Mr. Barwig."

"Thank you," said Von Barwig simply. He did not tell Mr. Hatch that he had nearly come to the end of his resources and that he would ride in the day car. Not that he felt ashamed of not being able to afford luxuries, but he instinctively resented making a confidant of a man like the senior partner of the firm of Hatch & Buckley.

As he walked rapidly toward Houston Street he found himself thinking for the first time since his arrival in America of the question of his future, but this question did not occupy his mind long. Like all his ideas on any subject other than that of his lost wife and child, it was forced into the background. As he neared his rooms in Houston Street his hopes began to rise; and the prospect of going to Chicago, the possibility of seeing his wife and child, began to work in his mind. His heart began to beat tumultuously. This time his dream would come true, and in his mind's eye he clasped his little girl tightly to himself and rained kisses on her little upturned face. He even found it in his heart to forgive the mother; after all, she was the mother of his little one, that he could never forget.

As for Ahlmann, he could not picture him; his mind refused to conjure up a thought of the man. It seemed as if he were dead, and that Von Barwig was on his way to rescue the wife and child from some danger that threatened them. This work of rescue was the fulfilment of an ideal. Nothing should be allowed to stand in the way of it! The senior partner of Hatch & Buckley had been quick to note this condition of mind and to reap the profits that came therefrom. Monomania means money, was a business axiom in that gentleman's office, but he had pumped the stream dry and Von Barwig was now at the end of his resources. By some strange process of thought, Von Barwig recognised this fact, but it seemed to him to mean that because his money had come to an end his search had also come to an end. The result of his trip to Chicago could not but be favourable, because he dared not think of its failure. So great is the influence of hope upon imagination that by the time Von Barwig reached his rooms he was already contemplating the possibility of keeping his wife and child there, at least until he could obtain better quarters for them. So, when he opened the door of his room, and found Jenny there polishing the brass andirons, he took more notice than usual of the little girl, and to her intense joy promised to bring her a box of candy from out West, where he told her he was going as he busied himself packing his handbag.

In a few hours Anton Von Barwig, his heart beating high in expectation, was seated in one of the day coaches of a fast Pennsylvania Railroad train on his way to Chicago.

The "music master" can no longer pay rent for the piano.

Chapter Six

Von Barwig had left New York with a light heart. Hope had ripened into expectation, and for the first time since his arrival in America, seven years since, he had felt something like a positive assurance that this time his mission was going to result favourably. Hatch had assured him that his partner had positively found the missing wife and child; and Von Barwig had gradually allowed himself to think it possible, then probable, and finally he became almost certain of the successful result of his journey to Chicago.

As Jenny watched him pack his valise on the afternoon he left for Chicago, she had noticed that now and then his face beamed with happiness, the happiness of expected joy. And when he jokingly asked her how she would like to be his little girl, it made her, so happy that she wanted to throw her arms around his neck and cry on his shoulder. She felt that he was just the kind of father she would like to have, but the conversation didn't get very far, for Von Barwig had a train to catch and was too busy to hear the little girl's response to his question.

Jenny thought he was not quite in earnest, certainly not so deeply in earnest as she was. Her aunt did not quite understand her, and she needed some one to whom she could open her heart. She felt that Mr. Von Barwig would listen to her little confidences and sympathise with her; perhaps even tell her his troubles. Young as the girl was, she felt that the man had suffered. She couldn't tell why, but her little heart had gone out to him in sympathy almost from the moment she saw him. How it was she could not have explained, but she loved him. Jenny thought these things over long after Mr. Von Barwig had departed on his journey. It made her glad to think how happy he was when he left the house with his valise and umbrella, hurrying to catch the little bobtail car that wended its way across town to the Pennsylvania ferry.

So it came about that when Jenny, looking out of the window some few days later, saw him coming up the street slowly, disconsolately, almost dragging himself along, the little girl experienced a great shock. The man seemed to have changed altogether. It was the same dear Mr. Von Barwig, yes, but the eyes of love cannot be deceived; he looked older, and oh, so careworn and tired! She rushed to the door at once, to save him the trouble of finding his night key, and greeted him with affectionate inquiry. To her intense disappointment, he nodded absentmindedly to signify his appreciation of her act. The faint, ghost of a smile came over his face, but he did not look at her. Silently he opened the door to his room and passed into it without speaking, closing the door firmly behind him. Jenny's heart sank; she felt rather than knew that her friend was in trouble, for he did not pat her on the head or pinch her cheek as he had always done before when she opened the door for him.

Her inability to be of any service to him only added to the child's sorrow; tears came into her eyes as she stood looking at the closed door, for she felt completely shut out of his life. At supper that night, when her aunt asked her "what ailed her," and invited Mrs. Mangenborn to look at "Jenny's long face," the child tried to laugh, failed completely, and burst into a flood of tears. Jenny could not have explained to herself the whys and wherefores of her tearful outburst, but the child could not forget poor Von Barwig's drawn, haggard face and its weary, hopeless expression.

"She's a queer child," commented Mrs. Mangenborn, when Jenny had gone to bed that night.

"Her father had blue blood," replied Miss Husted impressively, "and you always find hysterical natures in high-born families."

"I shouldn't wonder," agreed her friend; "something is wrong with the child, that's plain."

"What do you suppose it is," said Miss Husted, rather anxiously. "Perhaps she's working up for an illness! Oh, dear," she went on, almost in tears, for shallow as she was herself, she loved the child deeply, "shall I send for a doctor? I think I'd better; I always feel safer with a doctor in the house."

"Wait till the morning," suggested Mrs. Mangenborn; "if anything's going to develop, you'll know what it is by then."

"Do you think anything will develop?" inquired Miss Husted, clutching Mrs. Mangenborn by the arm.

"I don't know for certain," replied her friend, "but it can't be much anyway, or I'd have seen it there," pointing to a pack of cards on the mantelpiece. "Wait a moment," she said suddenly, and then she knit her brows as if thinking very hard; "didn't the six of spades come out true? Yes, it did!" and she shook her head thoughtfully.

"I shan't feel comfortable till I go and see her," said Miss Husted, now thoroughly alarmed; and taking a lamp from a side table, the good lady went upstairs to look at her niece.

"That six of spades surely came out for something," muttered Mrs. Mangenborn to herself. "Six is tragedy! Well, we must take what comes," she continued philosophically as she helped herself liberally to some chocolate caramels that Miss Husted had thoughtfully, or thoughtlessly, left on the table.

In the meantime, another tragedy of a very different sort was being enacted in the room on the parlor floor—the tragedy of the death of hope. For when Anton Von Barwig closed the door of his room on the evening of his return from Chicago, he closed it finally and forever upon hope, and gave himself up completely to dull, grim, sodden despair. Not only this, but he cursed himself for ever having hoped. He never suspected for a moment that the eminent firm of Hatch & Buckley had wilfully deceived him, for Mr. Hatch's partner almost cried with vexation and disappointment when he found that the woman and child he pointed out were not the "parties" they were looking for. Indeed, Mr. Buckley's grief was so poignant that Von Barwig almost felt sorry for the man, who declared that his professional honour as a detective was ruined from that moment. It was, in this case, for Von Barwig made up his mind at once never to employ him again.

The summer twilight was fast deepening into night as Von Barwig sat staring out of his window, looking at the passers-by and seeing them not. He rebelled against fate, conditions, life; and for the first time in his career he railed at his Creator. He had asked for light, and no light came in answer to his prayer; only more darkness, more disappointment, more loneliness. He sat with bowed head, wondering what was the meaning of it all. Who could solve the problem; who could straighten out his tangled life; who could explain it? Was the devil really and truly greater than God—the God who is Love?

Von Barwig had read Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, Haeckel, all the school of pessimistic philosophers that exercised such a tremendous influence upon the thought of his day; but he had always instinctively rebelled against the nihilism of their creed, the creed of materialism. Yet, at this moment he was perilously near to believing that the force for evil was greater than the force for good. There was no love in his life; and for him love was life itself. As he sat there with eyes fixed and staring, seeing nothing, hearing nothing, he thought over the events that had come to him since his sojourn in America. For the past seven years he had devoted every thought, every energy, and nearly every penny he had to the search for his loved ones. And he had failed, failed, failed.

When the first shock of his loss came upon him in Leipsic he had asked himself the meaning of it, and the answer had come to him that Art had been his mistress, and that she had stepped in between him and the ones he loved. He had been selfish, he had loved his Art as much, more perhaps, than his own flesh and blood—and this was his punishment. Yet he had given up his mistress, Art; he no longer lived for her; he would live for his wife and child, if he could only find them, if, if, if! He felt that there was indeed nothing to live for! Then why live, he asked himself? Better be dead; far better be dead! Who would care if he were no more? At this moment Von Barwig caught himself up, and realising his own danger refused to allow himself to drift along that line of thought. Life meant nothing to him now, but live he must, live he would; that he was determined on. Complex as the problem was, he would go on with it. He was not a coward, and for this he thanked his Creator.

In thanking Him he gained a little courage, and he asked for a sign, something to indicate that he was not the sport of fate, the creature of circumstance; something, anything, to indicate that God had not completely forgotten him. With bowed head Von Barwig prayed that he might be saved from himself; that thoughts of self-destruction might never again come into his mind; for he felt that he might not always have the power to reject them. He asked that the desire to live might again come upon him; for it dawned upon him that perhaps his duty lay in the direction of serving others. Desire is prayer, and Von Barwig's prayer was answered, for when he looked into the street he saw life once more. Opening his window he heard the voices of the children at play. He saw their joy, and rejoicing with them, he thanked God that he could rejoice. As he arose from his chair he sighed, a deep, deep sigh, and the darkest moment in his life had passed.

"Was that a knock?" Anton asked himself as he turned toward his door. "Surely not a visitor?"

Lighting his lamp, he looked at the cuckoo clock upon the wall. It said a quarter past nine o'clock; he had not heard the cuckoo strike seven, eight, or nine!

"Phew!" he whistled, "I had no idea it was so late." Again the timid little knock.

"Surely I can't be mistaken again," thought Von Barwig, and walking to the door he threw it wide open.

To his utter astonishment, a little girl in a white night-gown stood there, silently sobbing as if her heart would break.

"Why, Jenny, Jenny!" and Von Barwig, taking the trembling child in his arms, placed her gently in his armchair. "Jenny, my dear child."

"I—I—couldn't go to sleep until I'd said good-night; I tried to but I couldn't," sobbed Jenny as soon as she could speak coherently.

"Why, what has happened?" asked Von Barwig, as he covered her with a travelling rug.

"You asked me to be your little girl, and then, when I said 'Yes,' you didn't answer; and I—thought—you—were—angry—with—me—because—because! When—you—came—in, I felt so sorry for you, and you looked so unhappy that I had to come down and ask you to forgive me. I—I just couldn't help—it. You're not angry, are you?"

"My dear, dear little girl. I, angry?" Von Barwig shook his head. "How could I be angry with you? Why should I? Why, it's—it's impossible!" and Von Barwig laughed at the very idea. Jenny sighed deeply and remained silent; she seemed contented simply to be with him.

After a few moments' silence Von Barwig looked at her.

"Is this my answer; is this—my—answer?" he thought, and then he said slowly, "I am glad, more glad than I can ever tell you, that you have come to me at this moment."

He looked at the girl thoughtfully; she was not his little Hélène, but he would try to love her as if she were. Von Barwig took her hand in his and tenderly stroked her cheek.

"You shall be my little girl, my little one, eh, eh? You shall!"

"Yes," nodded Jenny, smiling happily, "I'll be your little girl, if you'll have me." And from that moment Von Barwig never again felt quite alone in the world.

At this instant a loud scream was heard, followed by another, and still another.

Von Barwig rushed into the hallway, followed by Jenny.

"She's gone, gone! jumped out of the window!" screamed Miss Husted, from the top floor. "Look! the window's open, and she's gone; jumped out—gone."

"Who, who?" shouted Thurza, rushing upstairs.

"Jenny, Jenny!" wailed Miss Husted—so excited that she was almost beside herself.

Jenny and Von Barwig looked at one another in astonishment and the little girl hurried after Thurza, arriving upstairs just in time to prevent her aunt from going into hysterics.

"Here I am, auntie," she said, and Miss Husted was so delighted to see her niece again, that she forgot to scold her. As she came downstairs after satisfying herself that Jenny was not only safe and sound, but in her usual health—she found Herr Von Barwig at the foot of the stairs waiting for her.

"She is all right, eh, madam?"

"Oh, yes," responded that lady, pleased that Herr Von Barwig should be interested in the welfare of any member of her family.

"She is a good child; I like her very much, very much."

"Yes, Jenny is a very good girl; her father was a member of one of the oldest New York families, quite the aristocrat let me tell you!"

"Ah, yes. Her father is dead?" repeated Von Barwig, "and her mother also?" he asked.

"I am her only living relative," sighed Miss Husted.

"Ah, I am glad of that," said Von Barwig simply, "Yes—I—Jenny and I have come to an understanding. I am her—what you call—not father-in-law—her—her——"

Von Barwig fumbled a little with the English language until he made Miss Husted understand that he had taken her niece under his wing, so to speak; and hoped that she would have no objection. On the contrary, Miss Husted was highly pleased, for one of her lodgers had told her that Von Barwig had been a great man in Germany.

"I shall go out to dinner. Is there a restaurant near here that you can recommend?" asked Von Barwig. "Dinner? Why it's nearly ten o'clock!" replied Miss Hasted, "let me get you a cup of tea."

"No, thank you, madam. I must go into the street, into the café, where there is life, and people; I must get away from myself. Here I think too much my own thoughts. Where did you say?"

"Galazatti's across the street is a nice little café," she replied, "and he serves a nice table d'hôte."

"Ah, I shall go there, then. Thank you, madame. Good-night!" and Von Barwig bowing to Miss Husted, closed the front door quietly and went into the street.

Chapter Seven

When Anton arose the next morning after a refreshing night's rest, he became conscious that he was looking at the world through different coloured spectacles; and that there was no longer a dull feeling of despair gnawing at his heart. For the first time in many years his plans for the day did not include a search in this or that direction for his lost ones. It was not that he had forgotten, but he thought of them now as dead and gone; and this certainty, this lack of suspense, lightened his heart to such an extent that his manner was almost buoyant. Realising the fact that he had spent nearly all of the large sum of money he brought with him from Germany, he thought of his future, his welfare. To do for others, he must first do for himself; he must think of his music again; in short, he must earn a living. So, after a light breakfast at Galazatti's, he took an inventory of his available assets. They included some old music; some compositions which he would now try to sell; a genuine Amati violin worth at least three thousand dollars; a grand piano; one or two paintings; some silverware, presents, and jewelry; and about eight hundred dollars in cash.

Von Barwig was completely bewildered; he had purposely avoided meeting musicians in New York and scarcely any one knew him; those who had known him by reputation had now completely forgotten his existence. He had not felt sufficient interest in affairs going on around him to realise the state of musical art in America, so he scarcely knew how to begin. It seemed like the commencement of a new life. The period was that between Jenny Lind and Adelina Patti, and he soon realised that musical art was at its lowest ebb. There were one or two ambitious orchestra conductors in America; one in Chicago trying to introduce the Wagnerian polyphonic school, and perhaps one or two in New York; but the public clamoured after divas, prima donnas and tenors with temperaments and vocal pyrotechnic skill. For orchestral music there was little demand. Wagner was as yet unknown to the public—certainly he was unheard except on the rarest occasions and the majority of musicians did not like him because he was difficult to play.

So it happened that Von Barwig's compositions, which were of the modern German school and rather heavy, did not find a ready market, in fact they did not find a market at all. Day after day he would visit the music stores with his music roll tucked under his arm. After a few months the music publishers used to smile when they saw him coming into their places of business, and shake their heads before he had a chance even to show them his manuscripts. As time went on he came to be a byword among them.

"Here comes poor old Von Barwig," they would say, and then they would smile at his earnest face with its sad, longing expression and sympathise with him for his beautiful smile of resignation as he folded up his package of compositions and went sadly away. They admired his technical skill, but thought him very foolish to waste his time on such "stuff" as they called it. They advised him to write for the hour, and not for posterity.

"You must give the public what they want," said Schumein.

"How can you tell what they want if you don't try?" pleaded Von Barwig. "If you give them only what you acknowledge is bad, how will they ever know what is better?"

"It's no use," was Schumein's reply, "music like yours has no market value. We're not in business for our health; once strike a popular tune and you'll be famous!"

Von Barwig had never mentioned his Leipsic reputation, and if he had, in all probability, it would have been useless. Seven years is a long time for even a genius to remain in obscurity.

"Bring in a good waltz," said one.

"What we want is a catchy melody; something that everybody whistles," said another.

Finally they were too busy to see Von Barwig at all; and after waiting hours and hours in vain efforts to obtain an interview, he would walk home slowly, thinking over the events of the day, or trying to create a tune that might make an appeal to the music-loving, or rather music-buying public.

"Alas!" he would say to himself, after giving up the effort. "I do not understand these people. The American people do not like my work." It did not occur to him that the Americans were not a music-loving nation, at least not at that period. And so Anton Von Barwig gradually came out of the world of dreams into the world of life. He had been reborn, of necessity, for he was nearly down to his last penny. He used to talk over the condition of the music market with Tagliafico, our old friend, Fico, of the hall bedroom on the top floor of Miss Husted's establishment, and Pinac, Fico's friend, who occupied the room adjoining. The meeting of these three men, which subsequently resulted in a friendship lasting many years, came about as follows:

While eating dinner at Galazatti's one night, Von Barwig found himself at the same table as Fico. Fico bowed to him and he graciously acknowledged his salute, not knowing who the man was, but vaguely remembering his features. Fico then introduced Pinac, his fellow-lodger. Fico had recognised Von Barwig as the occupant of the first floor and took this opportunity of making the acquaintance of the musician whose music he had so often heard on the piano—for Von Barwig frequently played his own compositions and the strains were wafted through the open window. Pinac was most enthusiastic, for he knew Von Barwig slightly by reputation. He had been in Dresden and he had heard of Anton Von Barwig, the musical conductor. It seemed scarcely possible that the gentleman before him was that great man.

Von Barwig was silent, smiling a little at Pinac's enthusiasm, but as he did not deny his identity Pinac felt sure that he was right. The three men soon became quite friendly and often met in the little café to talk things over. Galazatti's was frequented chiefly by foreigners and the din of loud voices added to the rattle and clatter of knives and forks made conversation difficult. But its patrons soon became used to this and the table d'hôte was cheap and good at the price, twenty-five cents. It was a combination of East Side Tivoli and French Brasserie and Hungarian Goulash Rendezvous—a tiny cosmopolis in itself—and it did a rushing business.

So the months dragged along in unending monotony. Poor Von Barwig tried hard to do work that would please the gentlemen who controlled the music trades, but failed. One day, while looking over his manuscripts to discover if possible the cause of his failure, he was struck by the similarity of one of his compositions to another. They all seemed to contain the same melody, in one form or another, and he saw plainly at last that he was subconsciously haunted by the leading motif of the first movement of his last symphony, the symphony that was played on that dreadful night for the first and last time. The inference was plain enough. This melody haunted him, he could not forget it; it showed itself in all his work and he realised that his career as a composer had come to an end.

After that Von Barwig tore up all his compositions and turned his attention to teaching, an occupation he had always hated ever since he had given up the professorship of counterpoint and harmony in the Leipsic Conservatory. Teaching—the very thought had made him shudder. He looked about him and found that New York was fast moving uptown, and that Houston Street was not a good locality for a musical conservatory. People who could afford to study music did not live in that neighbourhood; but he could not summon up sufficient energy or courage to leave the place. He had come to like the old house; it had become a home to him now. He liked Miss Husted, too, though she made him the repository for all her troubles, and then there were Fico, and Pinac and Jenny—he really loved Jenny. His little world was all in Houston Street and he made up his mind not to leave it, even if the location made the getting of pupils harder. Besides he felt that he was not a fashionable teacher; he could teach only those who learned music because they loved it and not because they wanted to be accomplished.

Von Barwig did not speak to his friends of all this; his pride would not allow him to discuss his personal affairs with them. Besides neither Pinac nor Fico could throw much light on the pupil question, for though they were musicians, yes, for they played, they did not teach. Pinac did not even know until Von Barwig showed him how to hold his violin properly he used to grab it with his whole hand instead of by his finger and thumb; and as for Fico, he could not read music until Von Barwig taught him, but played the mandolin, guitar and piano by ear. These men were not only grateful to Von Barwig for his kindness, but they loved him, and recognising in him the real artist had unbounded respect for him. As for Von Barwig, he found them simple fellows, sentimental, unpretentious and good-hearted, and he liked them and felt at ease with them because they did not seek to probe into that part of his life which he preferred should remain unknown to them. They merely accepted him as they found him and for this Von Barwig was grateful. As time went on, Von Barwig found himself badly in need of ready money. One day when Miss Husted came for her rent, he hesitated before he paid her; he had forgotten it was rent day and was unprepared. The poor lady was kindness itself, but her kindness embarrassed Von Barwig extremely, for he had never been in a position in his life where he actually needed cash for his daily wants.

"Leave it a week, a month, a year, my dear professor!" said Miss Husted, and she implored him not to pay her if it afforded him the slightest inconvenience.

"I go to the bank—if you come in an hour I will have it for you," said poor Von Barwig, quite overcome. He did not know what it was to be "behind," and the experience was painful to him.

This was the beginning of the end, and the valuable Amati violin soon went for eight hundred dollars, one-fourth its value, to a scoundrelly violin maker and dealer who told Von Barwig he had tried everywhere but could get no more for it, since there was a doubt as to its genuineness.

Von Barwig took the money, which was further decreased by a twenty per cent. commission. The man told him he was very lucky to get it; and perhaps he was.

This amount tided Von Barwig over for several months, during which time he secured several pupils and seemed for a time to be in a fair way to make a living. Be it understood that he was no longer the Anton Von Barwig who lived in Leipsic ten years before. Gone was the fire of his genius; dead was his ambition. His soul was not in his work—the man was alive, but the artist was dead.

Chapter Eight

And so the years passed away; one, two, three, Von Barwig did not keep count now. One year was just like another, equally profitless, equally monotonous; the struggle for existence just as keen, the interest in this or that pupil just as superficial, the interest in obtaining pupils perhaps the greatest of all. But the drudgery of teaching the young mind to distinguish between crotchet and quaver, and mark time, mark time, wore Von Barwig out.

"Good God," he would think, "will it ever come that time shall cease to be, and I shall cease to mark it?" The old man often smiled as he contrasted the Leipsic days with the present. Then he had but to raise his arm and from a hundred instruments and five hundred voices would vibrate sounds of beauty, of colour, of joy, in harmony and rhythm. Now when he beat time some dirty-fingered little pupil would tinkle out sounds that nearly drove him mad with their monotony. Von Barwig had been compelled to sell his good piano and rent one on the installment plan; a cheap tin-pan affair, with a sounding board that sent forth the most metallic sort of music. This went on until Von Barwig hated the very sound of a musical instrument. He must have suffered terribly, but he made no mention of it. At the close of his day's work he would shut his piano wearily, put away his violin and go to Galazatti's, where he would meet his friends, Fico and Pinac. He did not complain, but they did. Fico was playing the mandolin on a Coney Island boat; Pinac was doing nothing, but sat in Galazatti's all day. When they complained to Von Barwig of their ill luck, their inability to obtain good engagements because they could not get into the Musical Union, Von Barwig did not spare them. He told them plainly that they had talent but that they were lazy; they would neither study nor practise, and yet they expected to enjoy the fruits of labour without its drudgery. Both Fico and Pinac felt that he was right, and from that day forward they did practise and study, with the result that a year or so later they were admitted into the Union; but times were hard and good regular engagements were rare.

One day while Von Barwig was labouring hard to beat time and other musical values into the head of a square-browed, freckle-faced youth of nineteen, whom nature had ordained for the carpenter's bench and not for the piano, a knock came at the door, and on invitation to enter, in came a little fellow not more than nine years of age, black-haired, dark-eyed, of olive complexion, his features plainly bearing the stamp of his Hebraic origin. As he stood at the door trying to speak, Von Barwig could not help commenting on his finely chiselled features and the intelligence and fire in his eyes.

"What can I do for you, little man?" inquired Von Barwig. His soft voice and kindly look of interest gave the boy courage; for he was obviously afraid to speak.

"Come to me," said Von Barwig tenderly, and after he had closed the door, he placed his arm around the boy's neck. The old man's trained eye discerned in a moment the sensitive play of the lad's mouth, the quivering of the nostril that denotes what we call temperament.

"I want to study—I want to learn—and they won't let me," blurted out the boy, bursting into tears.

"Who won't let you?" gently inquired Von Barwig.

"My people," sobbed the child.

"Hully Gee, you're in luck!" interrupted the shock-headed youth. "I wish my people wouldn't let me."

"You go home, Underman! You have no soul; this child has."

"You bet I will!" and with a dart at his hat, the big boy seized it and ran out of the door in a moment.

"So you want to study music and they won't let you?"

"Yes, sir. I—they'll let me play at night, but in the daytime, I—I must work."

In a short half hour Von Barwig made the discovery that the child was a musical genius. He had taken no lessons and yet his manipulation of the keys was marvellous, but all by ear. Chords, arpeggios, diminished sevenths, modulation, expression, all were mixed up in formless melody. The boy knew nothing, but felt everything. In Von Barwig's experience it had generally been the other way.

"Who sent you to me?" asked Von Barwig after he had heard the child play.

"The sign says that you teach music, and I—I—then I saw your name outside." The little fellow seemed to think that he had committed some crime in coming in unasked. Von Barwig put him at his ease, then called in Pinac and Fico, and they listened to the child's playing in open-mouthed astonishment. Bit by bit Von Barwig elicited his history from him. His name, it appeared, was Josef Branski, and he was the oldest of seven children. His father and mother had come from Warsaw, in Poland, and worked in a sweat shop below Grand Street near the river. Josef himself worked there, too, and helped to support his family, who all lived in three small rooms. His parents would miss him and be angry, he said, and this partly accounted for the little fellow's anxiety. Von Barwig shook his head; he already had many pupils who couldn't pay, as well as several who didn't pay, but here was one who had to steal the time in which to learn his beloved art. It would be a crime not to teach the boy, he thought, so he determined to take him as his pupil.

Some six months later an excited Pole bounded into Von Barwig's room and in a mixture of Polish, German and Hebrew threatened Von Barwig with the law if he continued to take his son away from him. He was, as nearly as Von Barwig could make out, little Josef Branski's father. Von Barwig vainly endeavoured to explain to the man that the boy could make his parents rich if they allowed him to study and develop himself as an artist, but they must give him time to practise, instead of compelling him to sew at a machine twelve or fourteen hours a day. The older Branski either could not or would not understand. He declared that he did not want his son to be a worthless musician (for he evidently associated Von Barwig with the gipsy, an inferior type of musician) and could not be made to understand that the boy had talent, even genius. He needed the boy's help and wanted no further interference from Von Barwig. Von Barwig saw that it was useless and gave up trying to dissuade him from his purpose in condemning the boy to the merciless grind of a sweat shop machine. So it was that little Josef came at night only for his lessons. This went on for some time, but Von Barwig shook his head sadly as he saw that the boy was tired out with his day's work and could not take in the instruction. Finally he told Josef that he had better not come again, as the strain of night study following the grind of machine work during the day was plainly telling on his health. But the boy pleaded hard:

"Take away my music and you take away my life," he said. "Some day father and mother will see and then they'll let me study with you."

Von Barwig looked at the boy sadly.

"They love me and they want to see me famous, but they don't understand. They work so hard, they have so little to eat, and there are so many of them. Mother can't work, you know, she has to nurse the baby. I must do all I can; I'm the eldest, it's my duty!"

The boy's eyes filled with tears as he thought of the hardships his parents went through. "Father worked till twelve o'clock last night; he's working now," and the little chap looked at the cuckoo clock, which was just striking ten.

"How long will it be before I can play to the gentlemen you're going to take me to?" he asked wistfully.

"I think you'd better have a little rest before you play to them, Josef. You've been working very hard; up at five, to bed at midnight!" Von Barwig noticed that Josef's face was peaked and white, but his great black eyes looked appealingly at his master.

"But I must play to them; they'll give me money and I can give the money to father. Then he'll believe me, and he'll believe you," said the boy in a tearful voice. His urgent, appealing manner had its effect on Von Barwig.

"I'll take you to-morrow morning," he said. "Will your father let you go?"

"I'll beg him, I'll beg him, oh, so hard, on my bended knees. He won't refuse, he can't refuse! If he does, I—I'll just make an excuse and leave the machine as if I were going for oil, or cotton or something. I'll come! Don't disappoint me, will you?"

And so it was arranged that the boy should call for Von Barwig on the morrow and that they should go to Steinway Hall, where Josef should play before some musical gentlemen that Von Barwig had come to know.

The morning arrived, but little Josef did not appear. After waiting three hours, Von Barwig made up his mind that the father would not let the boy go, so he sadly gave up the idea for that day, and waited till evening for Josef to come as usual for his lesson. When the child did not come, Von Barwig experienced again that sensation of fear, for the first time in several years; and with it came the train of sickening thought, the old dread of impending evil. Von Barwig soon threw this off, and waited for events with as much calmness and patience as he could muster up.

A week passed, and Miss Husted could not understand why Von Barwig spoke in such a low tone when he replied to her cheery good-evening. Mrs. Mangenborn put it down to hard times. Jenny knew something was wrong, for he said very little to her as she swept out his room. She knew something had happened, but experience had taught her that sympathy doesn't ask questions. As for Pinac and Fico, they were too full of their own affairs to notice anything unless it was brought directly to their attention, and as Von Barwig made it a rule never to burden other people with his troubles they were in blissful ignorance of his mental perturbation. So it went on till the tenth day, when Von Barwig made up his mind to go and call on his little pupil and find out what was the matter.

After much hunting and questioning, Von Barwig found the family he was looking for on the fourth floor of a crowded tenement house in Rivington Street. He heard the whirr of sewing machines and as he opened the door he saw the father of his pupil, and several others, all sewing rapidly as if for dear life. The six machines made such a noise he could barely hear the sound of his own voice. As soon as Branski saw Von Barwig, he jumped up from his machine and railed at him in terms of bitter reproach. It was well perhaps that Von Barwig could not understand and that the noise of the machines and the crying of babies prevented his hearing what was said. The father pointed into the next room and motioned him to go in there. Pushing aside a little chintz curtain, for there was no door, Von Barwig saw the object of his search lying on a cot in the corner of a small inner room with no window, only an air shaft for light and air, moaning in the grasp of mortal illness.

The mother sat by the bedside of the sick boy rocking herself slowly, and at the same time holding a babe to her heart. The little one was trying in vain to get sustenance enough to satisfy its pangs of hunger and crying because it couldn't. Another child of two years of age was playing on the floor, banging two pieces of wood together and shouting gleefully when it succeeded in making a noise. The woman looked at her sick son helplessly and then at Von Barwig.

"Doctor?" she asked feebly.

Von Barwig shook his head slowly. He saw that his little pupil was too weak to recognise him and gazed at him too moved to speak. His lips quivered, and kneeling down by the lad's bedside he wept scalding hot tears of agony, for he felt rather than knew that the boy was dying. It appeared from the mother's story that when Josef had reached home that night he had been in too excited a state to sleep. All night he moaned and tossed—the next morning he was delirious. The prospect of deliverance from his life of drudgery had been too much for him and had resulted in brain fever. The doctor said he had a bad cold, then finally announced that tubercular complications had set in, and as nearly as Von Barwig could find out the boy was now rapidly wasting away with the dreaded white disease. Von Barwig looked around him helplessly; the light was bad, the air rank poison and the noise and commotion distracting.

"What hope could there be for his recovery?" thought Von Barwig, and he then and there resolved on a plan of action. Before he left the house he had given the father all the money he had and secured a room with plenty of light and air and a nurse for the boy. His efforts were crowned with success. In a few weeks little Josef was gently nursed back to life, and at the first signs of returning health Von Barwig saw to it that he was sent South. "His only chance," the doctor had said. It was Von Barwig who gave him that chance, but in order to do so he parted with his last remaining bit of valuable jewelry.

It was some time before Von Barwig recovered from the effects of witnessing the sufferings of his pupil. When Jenny asked him about Josef Branski he smiled sadly and shook his head.

"The doctor says it may be years before he can touch an instrument again. Poor Josef—his little frame completely went to pieces under the burning fire of his genius; if any one was ever born out of harmony with his surroundings, he was. He might have become a great artist," added Von Barwig thoughtfully and then he sighed. It was a great struggle for him to send the money to keep the little chap alive down South, but he made the sacrifice without a murmur. If only the boy recovered, it would be sufficient reward for all his work. But it was not to be, for a few weeks later they brought him the news that his little pupil had died peacefully, without pain. Von Barwig said nothing—his mouth tightened a little and he smiled, a sad, far-away smile. Miss Husted tried to cheer him up. She had learned from Jenny the details of the affair and her heart went out to the old man in womanly sympathy. She had liked the boy, too, and when he came for his lesson had given him many a slice of cake, for she thought he always looked pinched and hungry, underfed, as she called it.

"Do come and have a bit of dinner with us, professor," she said. With her dinner was a universal panacea, but Von Barwig declined with many thanks. He had grown to like Miss Husted and realised that she was far, far above the average woman of her class. Moreover, he felt that she liked him, and sympathy begets sympathy.

"Professor, you are always doing things for folks, but you never allow folks to do anything for you," said Miss Husted, slightly piqued by his refusal of her invitation.

"Ah, then I accept!" said Von Barwig, seeing that she was hurt, "just to show you that you are more powerful than my own resolutions. But I warn you I shall be sad company; I don't feel quite myself tonight. It is better, far better, that little Josef should have—left us, for I do not think he would have ever been strong enough to play again, but—" and Von Barwig sighed, "it is sad enough. A little light prematurely snuffed out is always sad. Ah, well! I won't make you miserable. Life is full of sorrow for us all; don't let me selfishly add to yours."

At dinner he was the life of the party. He pinched Jenny's cheek; he joked with Miss Husted; he smiled at Thurza, and he even ventured a few remarks to Mrs. Mangenborn, whom he cordially disliked. Every one present thought that Von Barwig was as happy as could be.

That night, after he had closed the door of his room he sighed deeply and looked out of his window into the street at the blinking lamplights. Once more that mournful far-away expression came into his face and he asked himself: "Why? Why is it my fate to lose everything I love? Have I not yet drunk the dregs of my cup of sorrow?"

"Good-night, professor," came Miss Husted's cheery voice from the hallway, interrupting his reverie.

"Good-night, Mr. Von Barwig," said Jenny, as she passed his room on her way to bed. He opened the door and kissed her tenderly.

"Good-night, good-night, my friends," said Von Barwig. The sound of their voices comforted him not a little and then he thought, "I mustn't be ungrateful; there are many, many kind hearts in this world." And he slept peacefully all that night.

Chapter Nine

The next morning, while Von Barwig was waiting for a pupil—he had very few in these days—Jenny came into his room with a letter, at the sight of which his heart beat rapidly, for it was post-marked Germany. The handwriting was in a boyish scrawl he did not recognise.

"Not many pupils to-day?" ventured Jenny.

"No, they don't come; I'm afraid this is not just exactly the neighbourhood. New York is going uptown. I gave only fifteen lessons last week."

"That's not bad, is it?" asked Jenny.

"Not so bad when they pay, but they don't," laughed Von Barwig, and seeing that his visitor was in no hurry to leave him, Von Barwig ventured to open his letter and read it. He read it again and then looked at Jenny with such a perplexed expression on his face that she was forced to laugh in spite of herself.

"Young Poons is coming," he said finally.

"Is he?" replied Jenny doubtfully.

"Yes, he is coming. He is the son of an old friend; a very dear old friend. His name is August and he wants me to—to give him a start in life. He is a 'cello player. You know what is a 'cello? It's a large violin and stands up when you play it, so," and he took his own violin and placing it between his knees showed her how the 'cello was manipulated.

"He sails on the steamship City of Berlin. He is coming here to make his fortune," and Von Barwig laughed at the idea of making a fortune at music in America.

"How old is he?" asked Jenny.

"Hum—he must be seventeen by this time!" Jenny became quite interested. "I knew him when he was quite a little chap; his father was a horn player in my orchestra at—at—" Von Barwig hesitated; "in Germany. I must help him. Yes, Jenny, I must help him. Poor old August, I must be a father to his son! He was a dear little chap," he said reminiscently. "Tell your aunt we shall want one of her bedrooms on the top floor if it is at liberty."

"The one next to Mr. Pinac is empty. Aunt will be so pleased that a friend of yours is going to take it." And Jenny rushed off to acquaint her aunt with the good news.

Von Barwig told the news of the impending arrival of his friend's son to Pinac and Fico, and the three men went down to the docks to meet him. At the docks they learned that he had arrived with eleven hundred other steerage passengers and had landed at Castle Garden, so they went down to the Battery to try and find him. They found him in an inner room off the immigrants' reception hall, sitting on an old trunk, and busily engaged in trying to prevent his 'cello, which was protected only by a green bag, from being smashed by the rushing, gesticulating crowd of baggage men, porters and immigrants. With his round, smiling face and blond hair he was the picture of his father, and Von Barwig, recognising him in a moment, embraced him cordially.

"I am to be sent back," he cried in German.

"Nonsense!" said Von Barwig, placing his arm around the young man affectionately. After Von Barwig had introduced his friend, they noticed his crestfallen manner.

"What's the matter?" asked Pinac, who could not understand German, but who knew something was wrong, and wanted to show Poons that he knew the ropes in the States. Poons poured out a tale of woe which was intended to touch Von Barwig's heart and gain his sympathy, instead of which it made him laugh heartily.

"Some one is investing his money for him and hasn't come back yet," Von Barwig confided to his friends; and they laughed too. Poons could not understand why the men laughed at his troubles. The simple German lad had been swindled out of all his money, two hundred marks, by the simplest and most transparent of the many methods of swindling, the confidence game, and the immigration authorities had refused to allow him to land, as he had no means of subsistence. Von Barwig had very little money with him, so he consulted with his friends. They were playing in a café at night and had a few dollars in their pockets, which they cheerfully handed to Von Barwig. Between them they managed to find the necessary money and Poons was allowed to land. On the way uptown the boy was profuse in his gratitude for the money that Von Barwig had sent to his mother while she lived. It was she who had given her son Von Barwig's address and begged him to seek him out in America and greet him for her. Poons was greatly astonished at Von Barwig's appearance and condition, for he had always heard of him as one of the great conductors of Germany. He did not understand how Herr Von Barwig could be so poor, but he accepted the facts as they were and ceased to ask himself any further questions.

In due course they arrived at Miss Husted's and young Poons, bag and baggage and 'cello, was shortly afterward ensconced in a hall bedroom on the top floor of that lady's establishment. Von Barwig hurried to his room, locked the door and looked around him. A little later when he let himself quietly into the street, he had under his arm, carefully wrapped up, his cuckoo clock and a couple of pictures. That night at Galazatti's, when he handed to Pinac and Fico the money he had borrowed from them at Castle Garden and paid for the little dinner which he gave them to celebrate the arrival of Poons in America, they did not suspect that he had spent the very last dollar he had in the world.

Young Poons was not a success at first. He had a good technique and was a well-grounded musician, but he could not get an engagement suited to him, as he was not in the Union, and the foolish boy would not play dance music. He said he couldn't, and unfortunately the responsibility for his financial condition rested on Von Barwig. It was he who was compelled to make arrangements with Miss Husted and it was a hard blow to him to have the additional incumbrance, especially when times were so hard and pupils so scarce. It may be imagined that Miss Husted did not take very kindly to the new arrival, who was unable to pay even his first week's room rent. Of course she sympathised with his misfortune, but thought he should have taken care of his money and not have handed it to the first person who asked for it, so that now he was a pauper. She discussed this delicate point with Mrs. Mangenborn in the strict privacy of her room, but Jenny's ears were very sharp and her sympathy went out to young Poons. "Poor young man," she thought, "what a pity that he had been robbed." That his mother and father were dead added to the romance, and she felt a sort of a fellow-orphan's interest in him. "Poor boy! robbed of his fortune on his arrival in a strange country; penniless and homeless; can't speak a word of English; as helpless as a child." The maternal instinct in the child was aroused, and his large innocent blue eyes and blond hair made a very strong appeal to her. He needed a mother and she determined to be a mother to him. So, many a little delicacy was left surreptitiously in his room; now a box of chocolates, now a slice of cake, or even a few flowers. When young Poons would thank Miss Husted for these attentions in the choicest German that lady would turn on him and tell him to mind his own business, and he would smile and bow deferentially to her, saying, "Ja, Frau Hooston."

As the weeks went on, the struggle for Von Barwig to pay expenses became greater and greater. Poons saw that it was an effort and determined to sink his pride, so he begged Pinac to help him get something for him to do; anything, anywhere. It was a great day for Poons when Fico announced to him that the proprietor of the café where they played had given them permission to bring him and his 'cello on trial for a week at a salary of six dollars and his supper, at the end of the night concert. Jenny was quite proud. "I told you that Mr. Poons would succeed," she said joyfully to her aunt.

"Wait," replied Miss Husted, "he's not out of the woods yet."

But she was mistaken, for he held on to his engagement and at the end of the week was taken on permanently. This was most fortunate, for by this time Von Barwig had completely denuded his room of all superfluous articles of value; even the fine old prints that had adorned his bedroom went for a mere trifle. A silver baton that had been given him by the director of the Gewandhaus was the last thing to go. It was quite a wrench to part with it, for it was the last link between Von Barwig and his musical past.

In the meantime he had lowered his prices for music lessons in the hopes of increasing the number of his pupils, and at Miss Husted's suggestion even had a new sign made with large letters in gold-leaf. But pupils did not come, and Von Barwig felt that he was indeed doomed to failure. Everything he touched turned to dross; his one pupil of promise had died; there was no future, no outlook, no hope, and yet he did not give up, nor did he speak of his troubles to his friends. How he kept Miss Husted paid up she never knew, and yet, punctually every week, he handed to her the sum of money due her. When he suggested taking a smaller room upstairs she offered to lower the price of the room he was occupying. This sacrifice the old man would not accept; so he remained where he was, always hoping, hoping, hoping. He did not complain directly to her, but she knew that he was taking in little or no money. She blamed him for not being more exacting with those who were indebted to him, and as a matter of fact had he been able to collect all that was owing to him he would have been in far better circumstances; but no one seemed to think he needed money—he had such a prosperous air.

"What can I do?" said Von Barwig apologetically, when she told him to sue his delinquent pupils. "I tell them their course of lessons is finished and they make no reply, or if they do, it is an excuse or a promise. I cannot go to law with them, and if I could, just think what it would cost for the lawyer! Besides, they are very poor—these neighbours of ours. Music with them is a luxury, not a necessity. Poor souls, it brings a little joy into their lives! They struggle so hard to get higher in the scale of existence; why should I impede their progress by demanding my pound of flesh? No, my dear Miss Husted, they do the best they can; but they are poor."

"And so are you," replied Miss Husted, shaking her curls.

Von Barwig shook his head dubiously. "I'm afraid—I—I don't put my heart into my work." He did not like to tell her he thought the neighborhood he lived in was partly to blame.

"Who could put soul into a thing like that?" and he pointed to a cheap violin he had bought to play to his pupils when he taught them. "Or that?" and he dropped the lid of his piano to show his contempt for the tin pan, called by courtesy a concert grand. Miss Husted looked sad; the ever-present tear was close at hand and Von Barwig saw it coming.

"But, never mind, my dear Miss Husted; all comes right in the end! It's all for some good or other. I can't see it myself, but I know it's all for my good. Come! Cheer up, cheer up!" and he looked at her with such a beatific smile that she thought for the moment that she was very unhappy and that he was trying to help her.

"Very well, I will," she said resignedly, allowing herself to be comforted.

That was one of Von Barwig's individual traits. No one ever thought of cheering him up, for no one knew that he suffered, except perhaps Jenny. She alone saw through his smile, and felt rather than knew that it hid a heart torn with suffering and emotion.

A few days after this Von Barwig read in one of the papers that a man named Van Praag, whom he knew years before in Berlin as a ticket-taker in one of the theatres, was going to give a series of concerts in one of the large concert halls in New York. He mustered up courage to go and see him. Van Praag received him cordially and invited him to dinner that evening at one of the big hotels. Von Barwig put on his old dress suit, and Houston Mansion quickly recognised the fact. Miss Husted especially was most enthusiastic.

"Oh, professor, how well you look!" she cried. "Mrs. Mangenborn, do come and see the professor with his evening clothes on, he looks a perfect picture!"

Von Barwig was compelled to leave an hour before the time appointed for the dinner, in order to escape from the congratulations of his friends. That night, for the first time in his life, he begged for a position. He had failed at composing, at teaching, at playing, but surely he could still conduct an orchestra. The desire for success grew on him again. Van Praag seemed convinced, and at the end of the dinner, after taking his address, he promised Von Barwig he would do what he could; but he must consult the director first, etc., etc.

Von Barwig went home that night almost happy. A pint of champagne at dinner, with a liqueur afterward, had completely aroused his spirit; and for the first time in many years he felt quite jovial. He went to bed but couldn't go to sleep, so he rose and awakened Pinac and Fico out of their slumbers to tell them the good news, adding that he intended to engage them for his orchestra. Poons, hearing the sound of voices in the room next to his, came in, and the men sat talking over their prospects. Their hopes, their ambitions were about to be realised, and they talked and smoked the cigars Von Barwig had brought home with him until sleep was out of the question; they were too excited to go to bed again. Twice did Miss Husted send up to beg them to make less noise, as the second floor front, Mrs. Mangenborn, had complained that her slumbers were being rudely disturbed. So the men dressed themselves and went down into Von Barwig's rooms, where they sat till daylight, talking and smoking; after which they all went out to breakfast at Galazatti's.

As the weeks went by and Von Barwig received no word from Van Praag the certainty of the engagement died out and became merely a hope. Finally Von Barwig came to the conclusion that Van Praag had forgotten, and wrote to him reminding him of his promise. He received no answer to his letter, and even the hope of getting the engagement died out some few months after its birth.

Chapter Ten

The winter had now fairly set in and it was remembered by New Yorkers as the hardest in many years. Miss Husted declared it was the coldest in her experience, for the plumber's presence was constantly required to thaw out the frozen pipes. Certainly Von Barwig remembered it because he had to wrap blankets around him to keep warm while he was copying music at a few cents a page. He had other uses for the money that coal would cost; besides it was very expensive. So he preferred to write in bed rather than spend money for fuel, until one day some sixty odd pages of music were returned to him, because they were so badly written as to be almost illegible. The fact is, the old man's hands trembled so with the cold that he could not hold his pen tightly. After this loss he gave up copying music, and so even this last meagre means of getting money was denied him.

As he walked up and down his room, feeling intuitively that it was breakfast time, he became really angry with himself for his repeated failures. Lately he had been thinking of his wife and child; but fourteen years had somewhat benumbed his memory. When he thought of the happiness of his life with them, it was more as a happy dream that he delighted to ponder over than a tangible something of which he had been robbed. The wound was there but the pain had ceased.

"Are you coming out to breakfast?" said Pinac's voice outside.

"Come on, Anton," shouted Fico, "it's late!"

"I've had my breakfast," said Von Barwig, and he felt that he was lying in a good cause. The men would have torn down the door and carried him over to the restaurant by main force had they guessed the truth. "Thank God it hasn't come to that," he thought.

"He is an early bird," commented Pinac, and he went out humming the latest music-hall ditty which he was playing nightly to the patrons of the café. Poons went along; he had no more idea of his benefactor's condition than the man in the moon. The three men had not seen much of him lately, for they always left him to himself when he signified by his silence that he wanted to be alone. They respected his dignity, his slightest suggestion was law to them; they loved him, so they left him alone.

"Come on, you wretch," said Von Barwig to his violin, after the men had gone, "you are the last of the Mohicans!" and, polishing it, he put it in its case, having determined to sell it.

"This will be the first meal with which you have provided me," he said, shaking his fist at it, "so at last you are going to accomplish something, you cheap wooden cigar-box of a fiddle! I cannot play you to advantage but I can eat you. That's all you are good for—a few dinners and breakfasts!" He went out into the street with the violin under his cloak, and from Houston Street he turned into the Bowery. There was no elevated road at that time and the thundering, ear-splitting, overhead noises heard nowadays were not yet in existence. Still it was noisy, a perfect bedlam of jabbering foreigners, who crowded this busiest of busy streets as they crowded no other section of this cosmopolitan city. Von Barwig, usually so sensitive to noises, apparently did not notice this babel. Curiously enough his thoughts were miles away from New York, and the idea that he was going to sell his violin to buy a breakfast was not borne in upon him with sufficient force to prevent his thinking of something else. Although it was very cold he did not notice the weather, so he did not walk fast. His progress was a mechanical movement, for in fancy he was in Leipsic again, walking down the August Platz. It was a pleasant day dream, one from which Von Barwig did not like to awaken himself. He pictured to himself the joy, the happiness of his loved ones when they saw him, and thus he felt the reflex of this joy. These mental pictures were almost real to him, and he enjoyed them while they lasted, though he knew that they were not real.

"It is better to dream than to think of the present," he said to himself. "What is there going on about me but misery and starvation and folly? Why should I focus my mind on the evils of existence, analyse them, make them my bosom companions to the exclusion of all joy? No, I will think of those things that make for happiness. Little Hélène shall be my companion. These shadows" (and he looked at the people who passed him), "these caricatures of life shall not find a place in my mind. I will shut them out and in that way they shall cease to exist for me; since what we do not know cannot make us suffer."

Von Barwig walked down the crowded thoroughfare, barely conscious that he was dreaming, yet in his dreams finding peace. The old man knew that there was a musical instrument shop somewhere in the neighbourhood, but it is quite possible that he would have passed it by had not the sound of a loud, roaring voice, accompanied by the banging of a big drum, attracted, or rather demanded his attention and aroused him from his day dream.

"Eat 'em alive, eat 'em alive!" bellowed the voice. Bang! bang! went the drum. "Bosco, Bosco, the armless wonder," bang! bang! "bites their heads off and eats their bodies; eats 'em alive, eats 'em alive!" Bang! bang! "Bosco, Bosco!" the drum punctuating each phrase, making a hideous, ear-splitting duet.

"What hellish syncopation!" thought poor Von Barwig mechanically, as he looked at the individual from whom issued the voice that sounded so like the bellowing of a bull.

The owner of this extraordinary vocal organ was a big, fat, florid-faced individual with a dark, bluish-red complexion. He wore a flaring diamond ring around a glaring red necktie; and a loud checked suit that matched his voice perfectly. In fact, his whole make-up harmonised remarkably with the unearthly noise that issued from his throat. He was standing before a flashy-fronted building, on which was painted in large yellow letters, intended to be gold, the legend "Dime Museum." In the front entrance were several cheap wax figures of a theatrical nature, and some still cheaper scenes, showing the figure of a nude savage without arms, biting the head off a huge fish and eating it alive apparently. On the canvas were also painted pictures of a wild man from Borneo, a tattooed man, a skeleton, numerous fat ladies, mermaids, sylphs, and fauns; the whole forming a group of pictures and figures calculated to arrest the attention of the passers-by and attract them into the "theatretorium," as he of the loud voice called it.

It was not the paintings that caught Von Barwig's attention; it was the voice that offended his sensitive ear. He looked at the man in astonishment; never in his life had he heard such an utter lack of music in a human voice, such volume of tone, such a surplusage of quantity and an absence of quality. Barwig was fascinated and wondered how it could be possible. At this moment he caught the man's eye, and then a strange thing happened. The man stopped roaring, and, looking over at Von Barwig, in a more natural tone called out:

"Say, professor, I want to see you."

"Are you speaking to me?" said Von Barwig; his voice faltering.

"Yes," replied the showman, "that's just what I am." Coming over to Von Barwig he took him by the arm and led him almost by force into the entrance of the Museum. "Say, professor," he asked, "how would you like a job?"

"A job?" Von Barwig repeated helplessly, trying to realise the meaning of the man's words.

"A job; yes, to be sure. Can you thump the ivories?"

"Thump the ivories?" Von Barwig looked so mystified that the man volunteered an explanation.

"Play the pianner," and suiting the action to the word he perforated the air with ten large fingers.

"I play—yes. I—I play a little—not well——"

"Well, do you want the job? We've got a day professor, but we need a night professor. Day professor plays from eight till eight; night professor from eight till two or three. Depends on the crowds. Come on, now; I like your looks. Say the word and the job is yours."

It was not pride that made Von Barwig silent when he wanted to speak; he simply did not grasp the man's meaning.

"I see you've got your fiddle there. You can play the incidental music for the dramas with that; and you can play the pianner for the curios and the intermissions. Dollar a night; what do you say?"

"A dollar a night!" Von Barwig at last caught the man's meaning. He wanted him to play for that amount, at night, and it would not interfere with his teaching in the daytime.

"I only play a very little, just enough to show my pupils," he said deprecatingly.

"Oh, you're all right! You can read music, can't you?"

Von Barwig smiled. "Yes," he replied simply.

"Well, you'll get on to it."

But Von Barwig still held back.

"What's the matter, ain't it enough?"

Von Barwig was silent.

"Damn it all," the showman blurted out. "I'll risk it; a dollar and a half a night. Your long hair is worth that; you look the goods. I'll make a special feature of you—a real professor. Come on inside and take a look at the place. A dollar and a half a night, eight till three; is it a bargain?"

Von Barwig paused, then drew a long deep breath and nodded affirmatively.

"You'll be fine—fine," said he of the big voice. "I can see it in your eye; you ain't one of them smart felleys."

He grabbed the hand of his new attraction and shook it heartily. "Say, George," he roared, "come here! This is the new night professor."

George, the young man who was beating the drum, ceased that occupation and came over to the showman and Von Barwig.

"What's your name?" the showman suddenly asked Von Barwig.

"Anton Von Barwig," came the reply in a low tone.

"Well, Anton, my name is Costello, Al Costello." Then with dignity, "Professor Anton, shake hands with George Pike—he's my assistant. This is the new night professor, George."

"Happy to meet you, professor," said that individual, grasping Von Barwig's hand and shaking it effusively. This hand-shaking process seemed a part of the theatrical trade.

"Say, George, take him inside and introduce him to the curios and just tell 'em from me that if they don't treat him better than they did the other night professor, by the eternal jumpin' Jerusalem, I'll fire the whole bunch!" With that Mr. Costello slapped Von Barwig on the back, and resumed his occupation of attracting public attention.

As George and Von Barwig passed the turnstile and went up the passage that led into the main hall, the huge voice outside continued to roar.

"Bosco, Bosco, the armless wonder! Bites their heads off and eats their bodies; eats them alive, eats them alive!" And so Anton Von Barwig became the night professor in a dime museum on the Bowery.

It astonished even Von Barwig himself, when he found how easily he adapted himself to his new position. In a very short time he found his occupation far less irksome and tedious than he had expected. As to the disgrace of appearing nightly in a dime museum, Von Barwig felt it keenly enough, but he preferred to pay his way and suffer himself, rather than to make others suffer through his inability to make sufficient money to meet his expenses. Not a word escaped him as to his new engagement, for he was determined not to parade his shame before his friends' eyes until it became absolutely necessary for them to know.

Anton Von Barwig is compelled to pawn his favorite violin.

His duties were simple enough in their way; he extemporised incidental music on the piano or violin while the curios were being exhibited, and during the progress of the little abbreviated dramas that were played by the troupe of actors in the theatre upstairs. It did not add to Von Barwig's happiness that Mr. Costello always insisted upon calling the attention of the audience to the special music as played by "Professor An-tone of Germany, Europe," and would point at him and start clapping until the audience gave him the round of applause that he felt the professor was entitled to. To Von Barwig's astonishment and embarrassment, Costello took a violent fancy to him, and would talk to him whenever a chance offered itself.

"Professor," he would say, "you're different from the gang that hangs around here. I like to talk to you; it does me good. You don't never try to give me no songs and dances about how much more you're worth than I'm paying you, and how much more you know than the day professor. You ain't forever talkin' about yourself."

Von Barwig accepted this praise philosophically. He didn't in the least understand it, but he felt that Mr. Costello intended to be complimentary. He was grateful to him, too, for the man had raised his salary to two dollars a night without being asked, and on several occasions had let him go home early. Besides that, he treated Von Barwig with far more consideration and respect than he did any one else, even his own wife. The latter liked the professor and told her husband she was sure he had seen better days.

This deference made things much easier for the night professor, who otherwise would have suffered many an indignity. Indeed the position seemed to call for special insult from any one who chose to bestow it. He heard the day professor roundly abused on several occasions because he did not play to suit the performers. Not only insults, but cushions were flung at him, and Von Barwig determined if ever this happened to him he would leave at once. He was willing to sacrifice his dignity and his pride, but not his self-respect. Thanks to Mr. Costello nothing happened to mar the harmony of his existence there. The curios were very fond of Von Barwig, and he took quite an interest in them. Poor, crippled human beings, the sadness of their existence aroused his sympathy; their very affliction earning a livelihood for them. Was life not a living hell for them?

He found on closer intimacy with them that it was not, for they enjoyed life after their own manner and were capable of real affection. The midgets always shook hands with him every evening when he came to play. They were a loving little pair, brother, and sister, and they grew quite fond of him. Von Barwig, for his part, used to look upon them as children, although they were both well past forty years of age. Once he saluted the "little girl," as he called her, with a kiss, and he was quite astonished when she blushed. Her brother clapped his hands and enjoyed what he called the fun. But it was the untoward affection of the fat lady that nearly brought about a catastrophe, for her constant smile at the professor aroused the jealousy of the living skeleton and brought about an ultimatum from that gentleman in the shape of a challenge to fight a duel to the death. The fat lady was an agreeable individual. She seemed to have one occupation only, that of sitting in a rocking chair and rocking and fanning herself by the hour. The skeleton was quite sure that the professor was trying to win her affections, but as a matter of fact, Von Barwig was so fascinated by her constant rocking and fanning that he simply could not help looking at her, and she evidently could not help smiling. As he explained to the skeleton, her tempo was against the beat, or in other words, the rhythm of her rocking and fanning conflicted with the rhythm of the music he was playing. The skeleton did not altogether understand Von Barwig's explanation, but he accepted it willingly, for it was clear that the professor had withdrawn from the candidacy for the fat lady's affections!

It must by no means be understood, however, that Von Barwig liked his new occupation. On the contrary, it grieved his very soul; but it was far less painful than he had anticipated. Mr. Costello seemed to realise that his night professor was not in his element and he made it as easy for him as possible. The weary months went on, and Von Barwig by teaching during the day and working at night just barely made ends meet.

"I am getting thinner and thinner," thought he as a ring slipped from his finger and rolled under the old sofa which had been in his room for a long time. In looking for it he came across an old portmanteau which had been slipped under the sofa and had entirely escaped his memory during his residence in Miss Husted's house. He opened it and his heart beat rapidly as he saw the case of pistols he had brought from Leipsic intending to force Ahlmann to fight a duel. He looked at them—there they lay, old-fashioned, duelling pistols—weapons for the shedding of blood. He had found no use for them in all these years and now he would not use them if he could, so he gently laid them down on the piano and looked further into the portmanteau.

Within its depths, among many relics of the past he found one or two of his compositions, pieces for the piano. He lifted them up and underneath lay the symphony played by his orchestra the night she left him—the symphony that had never been heard in its entirety. He let the lid of the portmanteau fall. The dust flew up in his face, but he did not notice it, for memories of that fatal night came thronging into his brain and he could think of nothing but that never-to-be-forgotten scene. A great longing to hear that music again came upon him, a longing he could not resist. It was dusk and the gas lamps were being lit when he sat down at the piano. How long he played he never knew, for when they found him several hours later, it was quite dark and the old man was completely unconscious; his head had fallen on his arm which rested on the keyboard of the piano.

Mr. Costello was quite disturbed at the absence of "Professor Antone of Germany" that night, and when, the next night, Von Barwig walked into the Museum, his violin under his arm as usual, he was greeted quite effusively.

"Well, well, well, profess'! So you didn't give us the shake after all! Say, George, he's come back!" bawled Costello at the top of his voice.

"Yes," said Von Barwig simply, "I've come back."

The midgets laughed, the skeleton scowled, the fat lady smiled; and the old man took out his violin and prepared to go to work.

Chapter Eleven

Miss Husted was a woman of few ideas, but once an idea obtained lodgment in her brain it was by no means an easy matter for her to rid herself of it. She pondered over it and thought it out until it became too big for one person to hold. Then, under the ban of secrecy, she confided it to another, and another, and another, until it became everybody's secret. She went through this process in regard to her aversion to young Poons, whom she suspected in one way or another of being a burden to "the dear professor." In addition she had a haunting dread that Mr. Poons was in love with her niece. Jenny was now nearly nineteen years of age, and although she looked barely sixteen, she had developed into a remarkably good-looking young woman, a fact which young Poons had evidently noticed.

Miss Husted trembled with dismay when she saw Poons look at Jenny. She was very grateful that he couldn't speak to her in English, and still more grateful that Jenny couldn't understand German. Mrs. Mangenborn, aided and abetted by the cards, had predicted a most advantageous marriage for her niece; indeed the cards had pointed to either a title or a million, or both, and Miss Husted dreaded lest any premature, ill-considered love match should interfere with this happy prediction. She declared vehemently that Jenny was too young "even to look at a man."

Now Jenny had no idea that she liked young Poons. She was interested in him because she was sorry for him, and she was sorry for him because her aunt was always speaking against him. So Miss Husted brought about the very condition she most dreaded, for her niece began to like the young man from the moment her aunt forbade her to speak to him. This secret was originally Miss Husted's, but after she had begged Pinac to tell Poons not to behave like a moon-calf, had asked Fico to prevent the young German from sighing audibly whenever he saw Jenny, and had finally told Von Barwig she wouldn't keep Poons in the house at any price, everybody in the house began to suspect something. This suspicion ripened into certainty, and with the solitary exception of Miss Husted everybody sympathised with the young pair and aided and abetted them in their love-making.

But this was not the only awful secret that was troubling Miss Husted's innermost soul. For some time she had been troubled and depressed, for she had found several pawn tickets in Von Barwig's room. She had also missed several ornaments, pictures and even garments that had formerly been conspicuous possessions. His fur-lined coat was gone; and the cuckoo clock, what had become of it? When she saw the pawn tickets she knew, and the knowledge troubled her, for she realised how very badly the professor must need money to pledge articles of such small value. She pondered over her discovery until it became too big for her to bear alone, so she confided it first to Skippy, the little black and tan terrier that the professor had given her as a Christmas gift, and then not getting much response from that quarter she told her secret to Mrs. Mangenborn. She had suspected all along that poor, dear Professor Barwig was not doing well, but she never dreamed it had come to this. Tears came into the good woman's eyes as she showed Mrs. Mangenborn the pawn tickets and tearfully asked her what she could do. Mrs. Mangenborn, being a practical person, suggested reducing his rent and Miss Husted made up her mind to do this forthwith.

She could hear the strains of music coming from his room, so she picked up the little dog, which was now her constant companion, and knocked at the door. Receiving no reply she opened it and walked in. The three men who were playing stopped; Jenny, who was there also, looked very guilty, and began dusting the furniture. Pinac was playing his violin, Poons the 'cello and Fico was at the piano, with Jenny apparently as the audience.

"Isn't Professor Barwig here?" inquired Miss Husted, surprised at his room being occupied during his absence.

"No, Miss Owstong," said Pinac, always the spokesman of the trio. He spoke English slightly better than Fico, who could barely make himself understood. There was an awkward pause. "He lets us come down here to play. We practise to go into the Union. We use his piano; he is very kind," Pinac explained.

At this point the unfortunate Poons dropped his bow and in picking it up, knocked his music stand over. When Miss Husted glared at him, Poons grinned guiltily, and stole a glance in the direction of Jenny. Miss Husted followed this glance with her eye and rather testily suggested to her niece that the bell was ringing and there was no one to answer it. Jenny, who was glad to get out alive, hurriedly made her escape. Poons, sighing deeply, went into the alcove and looked out of the window. Miss Husted sat down, looked around the room pathetically, then followed Poons's example and sighed.

"Gentlemen," she began; then hesitated. After all it was the professor's secret. Perhaps they knew; if not, 'twas better they should. The men looked at each other inquiringly, and waited for her to speak.

"I'm very glad I've found you together—very glad. Do you notice any change in me?"

Pinac and Fico shook their heads, mainly because they were mystified.

"I haven't been sociable lately; not at all like myself," went on Miss Husted, "I'm so upset."

"That's all right," said Fico, who didn't know what else to say.

"Sure," nodded Pinac, who felt he had to add his share to the conversation; then they picked up their music and started to leave the room, but Miss Husted held up her hand and signified that she wanted them to remain. When they came back to her she looked around the room pathetically once more, and began plaintively:

"I said to myself, 'These foreign gentlemen will miss your cheery word in the hall and on the stairs.'"

The men began to feel very uncomfortable, for they had missed nothing. Pinac thought she referred in some way to Poons, and tried to catch his eye and motion to him to get out of the room, but that lovelorn youth was mooning out of the window, so Pinac nodded sympathetically at Miss Husted and said, "Oui, oui. Yes, oh, yes!"

Fico looked very grave and muttered: "Too bad; too bad!"

Again Miss Husted looked around the room very mysteriously and motioned to the men to come closer. They obeyed, somewhat apprehensively this time.

"What did it all mean?" they thought. "Why this mystery?"

"I've something to tell you in confidence," she said finally. She tried to open her reticule and finding Skippy in the way, she handed the little animal to Fico, saying:

"Will one of you gentlemen please hold Skippy while I find those tickets? He just had a bath and if he rolls over he'll get soiled."

Fico took the dog, which promptly yelped, so he hurriedly handed it to Pinac. Pinac, who was afraid of dogs, transferred the animal to Poons. Poons, anxious to be of some service to Miss Husted, tried to pet the dog, but looking at Miss Husted for approval instead of watching the beast, he held it so awkwardly that its head hung down and its tail stuck up in the air. Miss Husted, in the act of pulling pawn tickets out of her reticule, caught sight of the unfortunate animal suspended in mid air, and jumped up quickly.

"Look at him! Look how the stupid, stupid fellow is holding Skippy! All the blood will rush into his poor little head. The dog, the dog; you foolish fellow; the d-o-g, dog! I can't make him understand. Please tell him, Mr. Pinac."

"Hund—hund!" shouted Fico to Poons.

"Le chien—Le chien! Idiot, stupid!" said Pinac.

Poons was so startled by hearing them all shout at him at once that he dropped the dog into Von Barwig's coal scuttle, whence it finally issued covered with coal dust and ran yelping into Miss Husted's arms. That lady petted the frightened animal while Pinac pushed the unfortunate Poons out of the room.

When Miss Husted had completely recovered herself, she held up the pawn tickets.

"I found them," she said dolefully, "under that pile of music."

"Gritt Scott!" said Pinac. He knew at a glance what they were; experience had taught him.

"Are they of Von Barwig?" he inquired.

Fico took three or four of the tickets. "From Anton; yes," and then he sighed and shook his head.

The men knew Von Barwig was poor, but they had no idea to what extent his poverty had reached.

"His cuckoo clock: nine dollars!" read Fico.

"That was the first thing I missed—that cuckoo, evenings," sighed Miss Husted.

"Mozart, gone!" almost shouted Pinac, pointing to the spot on the wall where that musician's portrait had once reposed. "And Beethoven! And where is Gluck?" Then looking around: "Nom de Dieu! even his metronome have gone—his metronome! Dieu, Dieu!"

"I should say it was dear, dear!" said Miss Husted, who slightly misunderstood Pinac.

And so the truth dawned upon them. For months, for years he had deceived them with his smile, his optimism, his gay manner and cheery word, and above all by the open-hearted manner in which he gave away to all who came to him.

"All these years has Professor Von Barwig been in my house and he has paid me like a gentleman. He pays me now, how does he do it? Oh, dear!" Miss Husted tried hard not to cry, but the tears would come. The men looked on sadly; they had always accepted his bounty, and now they were reproaching themselves.

Miss Husted's feelings made her reminiscent, and when she was reminiscent she invariably exaggerated—in retrospect she saw everything as she would have liked it to have been. "When he first came here what a man he was! And this, what a neighbourhood then, an elegant residential district. I had a position then, I could recommend him; everybody knew Miss Houston of Houston Street." In spite of her sorrow she felt proud of the past.

The men looked at each other. They had heard this for the past fifteen years. It meant a long session and they wanted to practise their music; so Pinac merely nodded, and Fico shook his head gravely.

"Why, I was pointed out by everybody as Miss Houston of Houston Street. I was a landmark; a sight."

"Yes," said Pinac unconsciously. "You were; and you are still."

Miss Husted looked at him sharply. "Was he venturing to laugh at her?" she thought. But his sad face belied any such intention.

"How things have changed?" went on Miss Husted tremulously. "There's not a child in this neighbourhood that can afford to pay for his lesson! And when they can't afford it, he won't take the money! He gives away the very bread out of his mouth."

Pinac and Fico shifted uncomfortably.

"Everything he had of value has gone long ago. Do you remember that beautiful violin?"

"Ah, yes! his Amati. Yes, yes! He bought instead a cheap one. I wondered why, but did not ask him."

"And still he pays me. Where does he get it?" asked Miss Husted tearfully. "What is he doing out every night, nearly all night?"

The men looked at each other; this was another revelation. They were out at night themselves and so did not know of his absence.

"There's something done up to go to pawn now," said Miss Husted, pointing to a box wrapped up in a paper on the piano. It was Von Barwig's case of pistols. Pinac and Fico looked at each other in astonishment.

"Pistols for duel!" said Pinac at once. He had seen them in the theatre, long, thin, single barrel pistols.

"Sometimes I feel that he came to this country purposely to take vengeance on some one," said Miss Husted mysteriously. The men were much impressed, but neither of them spoke.

"I don't believe the poor man has his meals half the time," went on Miss Husted, somewhat irrelevantly. "I am almost sure he doesn't."

"We ask him to dine the evening," said Fico, with a look of triumph, feeling that he had not only discovered the problem but had also solved it.

"Yes," assented Pinac, "we ask him."

At this moment Poons came back into the room, having forgotten his music.

Miss Husted was so wrapped up in her thoughts that she had no time to frown at him.

A door bang was heard, and her sharp ears detected the sound. "There he is now," she said. "Please don't tell him that I spoke of his affairs. You know how sensitive he is."

A key was heard in the door; Von Barwig evidently thought the room was empty. As he came in, followed by Jenny, the sad expression on his face changed.

"Ah," he said, with a sigh of satisfaction; "when I set foot here, I am among friends. So glad, so glad! Welcome to you all."

Miss Husted, making a few lame excuses, hurried out. She felt that she had been guilty of an indiscretion in betraying the professor's secret to his friends.

Von Barwig greeted his friends warmly.

"Well, how is the little hausfrau?" he said as he handed Jenny a flower that he had brought for her. "Beauty is a fairy, eh? Sometimes it hides in a flower, sometimes in a fresh young face," and he pinched her cheek tenderly. "Here blooms a rose; not picked, not picked, August!" Poons smiled and shook his head.

"He doesn't understand me," said Von Barwig. "The son of my old friend has been six months in this country, and not a word of English can he speak."

"Never mind, Jenny! I find you a splendid fellow; one who can speak his own mind in his own language. Not a selfish fellow like these bachelors. Bah! a bachelor is not a citizen of his country; he is not even civilised. He is—a nondescript—a—a——"

The men were looking at him sadly as if trying to read his innermost thoughts. They seemed to have realised for the first time that his gaiety was forced. His spirits this afternoon were unusually high; and it made the reality stand out in greater contrast. Pinac felt that he might resent any reference to his financial condition, so he did not speak of it.

"It is a long time since we have had a nice little dinner together," he said in his Gallic way.

"Yes," assented Von Barwig, "a long time!"

"A dinner during which we can exchange confidences," ventured Fico, interspersing his English with Italian, and a word or two of slang. Pinac gave Fico a look of warning.

"He means a 'art to 'art talk," explained Pinac.

"Excellent, excellent!" said Von Barwig, rubbing his hands, and going over to the window he pulled up the blind.

"He falls into our trap very easily," whispered Pinac to Fico; "but be careful!"

Poons looked on and smiled as usual.

"I should like nothing better," said Von Barwig. "You shall all dine with me," and before his friends could remonstrate he had invited Poons to the banquet.

"But I asked you!" said Pinac.

"He ask you," repeated Fico.

"I ask you; we all ask you," asserted Pinac.

"In my apartment!" demanded Von Barwig, with some slight show of dignity. "Come, come! The matter is settled. It is good to have old friends at the table. We won't go to the restaurant; it's too noisy there; we shall dine here. Galazatti will send over a dinner without extra charge, if we order enough."

"I am not hungry," began Fico, but Von Barwig silenced him with a look.

"Then please find your appetite at once," he said.

They saw it was useless to remonstrate with him and for a moment remained silent, but Pinac determined to make another effort.

"You cannot afford such expense," he began. "It is too much."

"Pardon me," said Von Barwig, with quiet dignity, "I can always afford to invite my friends to dinner. I have had lessons all day, ever since early morning. Please, my dear Pinac, and you, Fico, old friend, do not refer to the financial side of our little festivity. It robs it of the zest of enjoyment, of comradeship. Let us eat and drink and be merry! The question is, what shall we have for dinner, not who shall pay for it?" And then without awaiting a reply, he opened the door and called for Jenny.

Pinac and Fico looked at each other. It was evident to them that Miss Husted had exaggerated Von Barwig's poverty, so their spirits rose at once.

"Jenny! We take dinner here. Get me the menu, Poons. Jenny, you will ask your good aunt, Miss Husted, to dine with us en famille—one of our old-time dinners. Now, what shall we have?" he said, scanning the well-thumbed menu that Poons had handed to him.

"It is an old one," suggested Fico.

"It is always the same. It is only the date they change," said Von Barwig. Pinac looked over his shoulder at the menu.

"Chicken à la Marengo," said the Frenchman, "with a soupçon of garlic."

"No," said Von Barwig decidedly, "Miss Husted doesn't like garlic!"

"À la Polenta is better," suggested the Italian.

"Ein Bischen Limburger," put in Poons, which was instantly frowned upon by all.

Jenny was asked to take down the order, and the process of selecting the dishes for the dinner was gone through; each ordering according to his own taste. Jenny tried to write down everything they wanted, but gave it up after she had filled three pages of suggestions and scratched them out again. Finally Von Barwig ordered a nice little dinner, including spaghetti and garlic. As Jenny was about to take the order to Galazatti's, Miss Husted made her appearance. Jenny told her that the professor had invited her to dinner, and she realised in a moment what had happened. It was the old story; the professor was to be the host. She suggested that she herself get up a little dinner for the men, but Von Barwig wouldn't hear of putting her to the trouble and so his ideas were carried out as usual. It was really a most enjoyable dinner! To this day Miss Husted speaks of it as one of those gala Bohemian affairs that must be seen and heard and eaten to be appreciated. As she afterward told her friend, Mrs. Mangenborn, they had a hip, hip hurray of a time. The dear professor was just as jolly as he could be. Even Poons was tolerable, although she would not for worlds sit next to him at the table. It was simply impossible for her to describe the dinner in detail, but how Fico swallowed the spaghetti without losing it down his shirt front was a mystery. How the man got so much on his fork and swallowed it down by the yard nobody knew, it was simply a sublime feat! But the toasts they drank (with the last of the professor's claret), the songs they sang, the art they discussed! Every word was a scream of laughter.

"Just listen to this," said Miss Husted, laughing at the very memory of the joke. "Young Poons asked what was garlic, and the professor said: 'Garlic is a vegetable limburger!' The idea of such a thing!" Even Mrs. Mangenborn consented to smile.

"And when Mr. Fico said, 'Wine is the enemy of mankind,' Mr. Pinac jumped up and said, 'Is it? Then give me my enemy, that I may drink him down.' Oh, it was a most enjoyable affair. I can't tell you all that was said," went on Miss Husted. "But how the wit did flow! Wit and wine; no, wit and water; there wasn't much wine. We didn't in the least mind the noise that the Donizetti family made overhead; though once when the chandelier nearly came down the professor did say they ought to live in the cellar! I think I'll give them notice next week," she added thoughtfully, "though God knows I need the money."

"What about the pawn tickets?" asked Mrs. Mangenborn.

"Not a word was said about them," replied Miss Husted. "I don't know what to think! The professor was just—oh, he was—well, we had a great time. There's something about Bohemia that appeals to my innermost nature. Give me a Bohemian dinner every time!" she said, when she had spoken her final word on the subject.

"He must have money in the bank," commented Mrs. Mangenborn.

Miss Husted shook her head. "I don't think so," she said.

On the same evening the collection agent for the Blickner Piano Company called on Professor Von Barwig, and presented him with a "final notice."

"I intended to pay you to-day," said Von Barwig. "I will pay you next week. Won't you please wait? I have two lessons to-morrow."

"You'll pay, or we'll take the piano away; that's all! You're six weeks behind."

"I had the money and I intended to give it to you to-day," Von Barwig pleaded. "But—some friends came to dinner, and—" He paused, and then smiled as it occurred to him how thoughtless he had been. The collector left the notice in Von Barwig's possession, and walked away without further comment.

Chapter Twelve

Affairs had not been going along very smoothly at the Museum. About this time, there came into existence a new tempo in music that appealed chiefly to people whose musical tastes were not yet developed, or who had no musical taste or ear whatsoever. Now the performers at Costello's Museum, who were called artists on the playbills, insisted that the "Night Profess'" play their accompaniments to their acts in this new style of musical rhythm—ragtime as it was most appropriately called. But Von Barwig, being a musician, whose music lay in his soul and not merely in his feet and fingers, could not do this. He worked hard to get it, but could not, and the artists complained to the manager. As a result Mr. Costello called upon Von Barwig at his lodgings; much to the professor's astonishment and dismay.

"Say, who was that freak that poked her head out or the door as I came in?" said that gentleman, as soon as he had banged the door shut, and seated himself comfortably in Von Barwig's armchair.

"Freak? Freak? we have no freaks here! Oh," and a faint smile stole over Von Barwig's features, which he tried hard to repress. "You mean perhaps Miss Husted?"

"Do I?" inquired Costello, "well, p'raps I do! She's of the vintage of 1776, and looks like a waxwork edition of ——"

"Please, please!" remonstrated Von Barwig. "She is a lady, a most hospitable, kind-hearted lady! You would like her if you knew her, really——"

"Maybe so," said Costello, somewhat dubiously; and then he blurted out: "Well, profess', I've come on a professional visit! I want to put you wise before you turn up to play to-night."

Von Barwig looked pained. Costello was bawling at the top of his voice, and he was afraid that the household would hear.

"Hush, please! You speak so loud. As you know, my visits to the Museum are, in a sense, a secret. I keep my private and my professional life apart, as it were. Forgive me, but please, please, don't speak loudly! I do not wish it known; for they think that I—they do not know that I—have—" Von Barwig was about to say, "fallen so low," but he did not wish to hurt the amiable Costello's feelings; so he paused.

"That's all right, profess'," broke in Costello; "I'm having a little trouble with my main attraction, Bosco, the armless wonder. I wish she was a tongueless wonder! She has no arms, but my God; how she can talk! I left her taking it out of the day professor; she was swearing a blue streak. Ain't it funny how these stars kick?" and Mr. Costello bit the end off a cigar, viciously lit it, and puffed furiously at it till the room was clouded with smoke. Von Barwig was silent. He was waiting for Mr. Costello to tell him the worst, that he could not come again. His heart began to beat; what should he do if he lost his position?

"She says your music is queering her act," said Mr. Costello finally, "she says you don't give it to her thumpin' enough; she wants ragtime or she can't work."

"I will do my best," said the old man simply. "I try hard to please her; indeed I do!"

"I know you do, I know you do, profess'! But, say, you can't do anything with them guys! You know I like you, you've got such damned elegant manners—the gentleman all over. Yes, sir, you're a twenty-two karat gentleman; you're the first professor the freaks darsent josh!"

Von Barwig bowed his head. He was grateful to Costello; the man had made his hideous task almost bearable.

"Now I don't want to lose her and I don't want to lose you," Costello went on, "but things have got to go right, see? They've got to! You're one of them kind that can take a tip. Give her what she wants! What's the difference? You're a gentleman—she's a lady! She doesn't know any better!"

"I am so sorry, so very sorry to trouble—" faltered Von Barwig.

"You're all right, profess'," broke in Costello, "you earn your money if it is small pay; but the job goes against you, now don't it?" His voice was almost soft. "You ain't used to our kind, are you?" The man's brusque kindness touched Von Barwig, and he choked up a little as he spoke:

"Well—I—I—I have had higher thoughts. Here in Houston Street life is strange, and I must take what I find. Times are a little hard, a little hard, and the parents of my pupils are pushed for money. They don't pay, otherwise, perhaps I—" and Von Barwig sighed.

"You ain't suited, that's what's the matter!"

"Oh, yes; oh, yes! I—" broke in Von Barwig, afraid that Costello might dispense with his services altogether. "I acknowledge the curios came a little on my nerves at first. It was all so strange: the people staring, the midgets chattering, the stout lady fanning, fanning, always fanning, the lecturing of the lecturer; and you at the door always calling 'Insides, insides!'"

Costello laughed, "You mean 'Insi-i-ide.'"

"Yes, insides," went on Von Barwig, unconsciously making the same mistake. Then he added, trying to convince himself, "Better times will come soon and then, perhaps, we shall part, but for the present I remain, eh, yes?"

Costello nodded. "As long as you like, profess'; as long as you like!" and he held out his hand for Von Barwig to shake. As Von Barwig did so, he said: "I shall always remember it was your money that helped me to bridge over—my—my difficulties——"

"That's all right, that's all right!" asserted Costello. "You're worth the money or you wouldn't get it. But don't forget, when the lecturer says, 'Bosco, Bosco, the armless wonder!' play up lively, see? and when he says, 'Bites their heads off and eats their bodies; eats 'em alive, eats 'em alive!' give it to her thumpin'!"

Here Von Barwig drew a deep breath. He was tired, tired unto his very soul of the whole business; but he had to go on.

"Yes," he said, with a pathetic smile, "she shall eat 'em alive yet livelier!"

This appeared to satisfy Costello, and shaking hands with Von Barwig once more, he went out and left him standing in the middle of the room. Von Barwig's eye fell on a daguerreotype of Mendelssohn, and it called him back to Leipsic. "Eat 'em alive, eat 'em alive, eat 'em alive!" rang in his ears. "Good God, to what have I fallen, to what have I fallen?" he cried to himself; then he stopped. "I must have more courage. I am a coward, I am always railing at fate! Who can tell what the future shall have in store for me?" Then he thought of the songs he had found in his old trunk with his symphony. He hastily opened the trunk, took them out and hurried uptown for the purpose of selling them, but the symphony he did not take—he had not the courage to sell that.

It was some years since Von Barwig had tried to dispose of his compositions and he made the rounds of the various music publishers with as little success as usual. "There is no demand for my music," he thought, and he went into a fashionable music emporium, as a last hope.

The clerks at Schumein's recognised him in a moment; his was a face one could not forget. Mr. Schumein, the head of the firm, could not see him; he was busy.

"I will wait," said Von Barwig, and he sat down.

"I'm afraid he'll be busy all the afternoon," said the clerk apprehensively.

"I can wait all the afternoon, if necessary," said Von Barwig. He was tired and was glad to sit down.

"Suppose you leave your songs here and I'll hand them to our reader," suggested the clerk, after Von Barwig had been waiting over two hours.

"They won't see me," thought Von Barwig, "I can no longer obtain an interview. I am not worth seeing," and he smiled to himself as he thought of the days when people used to wait for hours to see him. "Well," he spoke aloud, "I will leave them; and to-morrow I will call for the answer."

"Better leave it till next week; our reader is very busy," said the clerk, a little impatiently.

"I will call again next week," said Von Barwig patiently.

"What's your address?" asked the clerk.

Von Barwig told him and he wrote it on the back of the manuscript. "All right, I'll attend to it," and the young man threw the songs carelessly into a drawer in his desk. Von Barwig thanked him, bowed politely, and walked slowly out.

"Who is that?" asked a young lady who had just arrived in a fashionable carriage and pair. She had been watching Von Barwig for the past few moments and was struck by the sweet, gentle sadness of his face.

"He's a sort of a composer, miss; that is, he writes songs and things. He's a music master, I fancy, in one of the poorer quarters of the city," said the clerk, taking out the manuscript he had just thrown into a drawer.

"Yes," he added, as she saw the address, "he has a studio at 970 Houston Street. Rather far downtown," he added.

"Nine hundred and seventy Houston Street," repeated the girl; "that must be near our settlement headquarters." She made some purchases, and a few moments later the footman opened the door, and she was whisked rapidly away by a pair of fine blooded horses.

"Who is that?" asked a fellow-clerk.

"Why don't you know?" asked the other with a slight tinge of superiority. "It's Miss Stanton, the heiress."

"Is that so? She's a beauty!"

"Yes," went on his informant, "her father is only worth about twenty-five millions!"

The other clerk whistled.

During Von Barwig's absence from his room that morning, young Poons had taken possession of it for the purpose of practising on his 'cello, but this was not his only reason. Jenny invariably made it a point to straighten out Von Barwig's room at just about the time that Poons happened to arrive. There he could look at her and speak to her in little broken bits of the English language, without fear of being interrupted by Miss Husted. Jenny's knowledge of German was as hopelessly nil as his ideas of English; so they made up their minds to study "each other's language from each other." To help matters along, they bought two English-German "Conversation Made Easy" books, and in the security of Von Barwig's studio they exchanged cut and dried sentences by the page, neither understanding what the other said. On this particular morning young Poons, with the assistance of Fico, had written out an English sentence, which he had recited to himself dozens of times that morning, for he had made up his mind to declare himself.

The opportunity came quickly. Poons had scarcely been practising three minutes before the door opened, and in walked Jenny with Mr. Barwig's table-cloth.

"Ach, Fräulein Chenny!" said Poons, blushing.

"Mr. Poons," gasped Jenny, in complete astonishment, although she must have heard him playing as she came through the hall.

"Ach, Fräulein Chenny," he repeated, trying to remember his declaration, but by this time the English sentence he had learned by heart had completely left him.

"I could not speak to you for two days because auntie, that is, Miss Husted, was watching," said Jenny, laying the cloth. Poons nodded and smiled. "She was watching," said Jenny, but he made no sign. "Verstay? Verstay?" she repeated, making her little stock of German go as far as she could.

"Nein! Ich—" said Poons hopelessly. He was hunting for the piece of paper with his declaration of love on it, and was having a great deal of trouble finding it. Where was it? He knew it was in one of his pockets; but which one? He looked very awkward and embarrassed.

"Have you your lessons learned?" asked Jenny, taking out her English-German "Conversation Made Easy" book, and hoping to help him out by starting on a topic.

"Nein," replied Poons, who knew what she meant when he saw the book. Then he added in German that he had been so thoroughly occupied in practising that he had no time, but that he had something of great importance that he wanted to say to her.

Jenny almost shook her head off trying to make it clear that she didn't understand a word he said.

"Fräulein Chenny," he began again, but gave it up. He opened the lesson book and read in English, with a strong German accent, "Heff you die—hett of—die poy—found?" Then he looked at her ardently, as if he had just uttered the most delicate sentiment. Jenny smiled, and read what she considered to be an appropriate answer.

"Nein, ich hab die slissell meine—Grossmutter——"

She looked at him for approval,

"Schlüssel," corrected Poons.

"Slissell," repeated Jenny.

"Schlüss——"

"Sliss——"

Poons gave up trying and went back to his book, reading the following with deep-bated breath and loving emphasis.

"Vich—-iss—to der hotel—die—vay?"

Jenny's reply came with business-like rapidity.

"Der pantoffle ist in die zimmer——"

"Puntoffel," corrected Poons.

"Pantoffle," responded his pupil.

"Tsimmer," said he.

"Zimmer," repeated she, placing the accent strongly on the "Z"; and so the lesson went on. Suddenly a smile of joy spread itself over Poons's features. In searching for his handkerchief he had fished out a piece of paper from his hip-pocket. Joy! it was the lost declaration of dependence! He opened it, and read her the following with such ardent tenderness and affection, that the girl's heart fairly beat double time.

"Fräulein Chenny," he began, putting the piece of paper in the book and pretending that it was part of his lesson. "Fräulein Chenny, I cannot mit you life midout—you liff," and then, feeling that he had somewhat entangled his words, he repeated: "I cannot life midout—you—Chenny—you Chenny midout." Jenny looked at him in perplexity. His manner, the words—all were so strange!

"That isn't in the lesson," she managed to gasp, holding down her head bashfully.

"I cannot life midout you liff! Luff, Chenny, luff!" he added. He meant love, for he knew the meaning of that, and he waited for her answer. Perhaps she did not understand, but if she did, all she seemed able to say was:

"That isn't in my lesson, Mr. Poons; it isn't in my lesson!"

What Poons said in response to Jenny's statement will never be known, for at that precise moment in walked Von Barwig, who had just returned from his weary, useless effort to sell his compositions. His face brightened up as he saw the young lovers, and a beautiful smile chased away the lines of sorrow and suffering. There was no mistaking Poon's attitude. His eyes were full of love, and he held Jenny's hand in his. Although she indignantly snatched it away as soon as the door opened, probably thinking it was her aunt, Von Barwig saw the action, and it brought joy to his poor, bruised old heart.

"Come here, Jenny," he said. She nestled by his side.

"Poons," he said sternly in German, "how long has this been going on?"

"I don't know, Herr Von Barwig," replied Poons, in a low voice.

"Jenny, do you approve of his action?"

"I don't know, professor, I—" Jenny laid her head on his shoulder and Von Barwig knew that she loved the young man.

"Scoundrel!" began Von Barwig, turning to Poons. He tried to be serious, but the expression on Poons's face made him smile in spite of himself. Poons begged him to speak to Jenny for him; he pleaded so hard that Jenny asked Von Barwig if he was talking about her.

"Ask him if he likes me!" said Jenny innocently.

"I will," replied Von Barwig, and he turned to Poons. "Do you love her?" he asked.

Poons's reply was a torrent of burning love, a flood of words that let loose the pent-up emotion of a highly strung musical temperament that for months had longed for utterance. The way he poured out the German language surprised both his hearers; it seemed as if he could not restrain himself. In vain did Von Barwig try to stem the onward rush of the tidal wave of talk, for declaration followed on declaration, until Poons had completely poured out all he had wanted to tell Jenny for months. He only stopped then because he had fairly exhausted the subject.

"What did he say?" asked Jenny anxiously.

"He said, yes," said Von Barwig, with a faint smile.

Jenny looked at him shyly, and held out her hand.

"Go on, love, you loon!" said Von Barwig to Poons in German, "you have caught your fish. Don't dangle it too long on the hook!"

Poons acted on the suggestion, and took Jenny in his arms and kissed her. The old man looked on approvingly; his eyes were moist with tears, but his thoughts were far away from the lovers. He loved them, yes; they were good children, good; dear, children, but his heart yearned for his own flesh and blood. It did not satisfy him that Jenny put her arms around his neck and kissed him gratefully, or that Poons embraced him and cried over him. Their happiness only emphasised his misery. He wanted his own flesh and blood; he wanted his wife and his little Hélène.

But, feeling that he was selfish, he kissed them both affectionately, and promised he would speak to Miss Husted for them at the first opportunity. He did not have to wait long, for a few moments later Miss Husted came into the room with a letter for the "professor," and saw enough to convince her that Poons and her niece were more than friends. Poons wanted to pour out his heart to Miss Husted and tell her all, but Von Barwig promptly squelched this impulse, and sent him out of the room. Jenny followed him, and Von Barwig faced Miss Husted alone.

"They are charming young people," began Von Barwig.

"Yes, when they're apart," she replied.

"Now what have you against young Poons?" he asked conciliatingly.

"Nothing," replied Miss Husted, "but I don't like him!"

"Ah, if you knew his father!"

"I don't see how that would make any difference; it's the young man himself I object to! Besides, I have tremendous prospects for Jenny; she is going to marry a rich man, a very rich man."

"This is news," said Von Barwig.

"Yes," replied Miss Husted.

"Who is the gentleman?" asked Von Barwig.

"We don't know him yet; he—" Miss Husted hesitated.

"Ah, I see!" said Von Barwig, a flood of light breaking in on him.

"But I know he will come!"

Von Barwig shook his head. "You have been consulting Mrs. Mangenborn, the lady who promises you a fortune for fifty cents. Ah, my dear Miss Husted, when will you understand life as it is? You take the false for the real and the real for the false!"

"I take Mr. Poons for a fool!" said Miss Husted with some asperity, "and I am not far wrong."

"On the contrary," assented Von Barwig, "to some extent you are right, quite right! But he is young, and he is in love. To you, perhaps; love is foolishness; but love is all there is in life." There was quite a pause. Miss Husted toyed with the letter she had not yet given to the professor.

"You may be right, of course," said Miss Husted after a while. She was more placid now, more like herself. In thought she had gone back many years to a certain episode, the memory of which softened her toward love's young dream, and even toward Poons.

Von Barwig looked at her a moment, then took her hand in his.

"Is it possible, dear lady, that you, in your woman's heart, never wished that you had something to take care of besides Skippy?"

"Yes, but Mr. Poons is not—" began Miss Husted, and then she blurted out "I can't understand him; he can't understand me. I might talk to him for a week and he wouldn't know what I was talking about!"

"Yes, but Jenny understands him. What joy have you in life alone? Think of the joy of seeing a young couple begin life, just like two young birds in a little bird's nest! God put love into their hearts; can you stop them? No, neither you nor I can forbid! As well try to count the sands of the sea, as well try to stop the waves, the tides!"

Miss Husted did not reply for a moment. It was evident that Von Barwig had made some impression on her, but she would not admit it.

"I had built such hopes on Jenny," she said, shaking her head sadly.

"Can you tell how Poons will turn out?" inquired Von Barwig, feeling that he was gaining ground.

Miss Husted elevated her nose slightly, and handed the professor his letter. "He'll turn out of this house if he makes love to my niece!" she said.

"Give the matter a little thought," urged Von Barwig. "They both love you," he added.

Miss Husted sighed deeply as if thoroughly disappointed. Then she began to whimper. She told Von Barwig the story of Jenny's life; which story, with variations, he had heard annually for many years. He listened patiently, and agreed with her. Finally he extracted from her a promise to suspend action in reference to Poons until she had given the matter more thought.

"But in the meantime," insisted Miss Husted, "they must not speak!"

Knowing the extent of their knowledge of each other's language, Von Barwig readily promised on behalf of Poons to obey her injunction to the letter, and she left the room in a state of resignation.

Von Barwig opened his letter, his eyes fairly glittering with excitement as he read the following:

"MY DEAR VON BARWIG: No doubt you thought I had forgotten you, but such is not the case. Your appointment as conductor of the 'Harmony Hall Concerts' has been passed on favourably by the promoters of the venture. None of them knew you or had ever heard of you, but I soon won them over, and I am now empowered to offer you a liberal salary during the engagement. So come up to the hall at your earliest convenience and let us discuss details.
"Yours always faithfully,
"HERMANN VAN PRAAG."

P.S. "We are having some trouble with the Unions, but I do not anticipate any serious impediment to our progress."

Von Barwig's blood ran hot and cold; his heart beat so rapidly he could hear it. He read the letter again and again. His first impulse was to rush out into the hall to tell all his friends; to shout, to dance, to, give way to excitement. This he resisted. Then a great calm came over him; the end of his ill luck had come at last. It was a long lane, but the turning was there and he had reached it. Deep, deep down in his heart the man thanked God for His kindness. And as he read the letter once more, he wept tears of joy, for he felt that his deliverance was at hand. At last, at last, when well on the brink of failure, of despair, perhaps of starvation, this great joy had come to him!

In order to realise it to its fullest possible extent he sat down in his armchair and thought it all out. He could give engagements to Poons, to Fico, to Pinac. Pinac was a fairly good violin player, both he and Fico played well enough to sit at the back desk of the second violins. Poons would, of course, be one of his 'cellists. And he, himself? He need never go to the dreadful Museum again; for this alone he was grateful. Yes, he could share his good fortune with his friends; he could even make it possible for Poons to marry Jenny. These thoughts filled him with such wild excitement that he could restrain himself no longer. He rushed out into the hall, and called up the stairway for his friends. They were in, he knew, for he could hear them practising. As soon as they heard his voice they came trooping down the stairs, making so much noise that Miss Husted rushed out of her room and asked whether the house was on fire.

They all crowded pell-mell into Von Barwig's room. Was this the usually calm, dignified professor? Could it really be Von Barwig who was now almost shouting at the top of his voice, telling them to send in their resignations from the café, that they need play no more at a wretched twenty-five cent table d'hôte for their existence. He would provide for them, he would engage them forthwith for his orchestra. By degrees they understood, and when they did understand they made his little outburst of enthusiasm appear almost feeble and weak-kneed compared to the wild, unrestrained, excited, and enthusiastic yells of joy that they let loose. They embraced each other and danced around the room. They hugged Miss Husted. Poons even dared to kiss her, and although she slapped his face, she joined in the Latin-Franco-Teutonic mêlée of joy as though she herself had been one of them. In fact, she was one of them! Even then their happiness did not come to an end, for they ordered a good dinner for themselves at Galazatti's.

"To hell with the café," said Fico as he wrote to his employer, the proprietor of the restaurant, saying they did not intend to play that night, and could never come again.

"Table d'hôte, nothing! Not for me, never again," said Pinac as he indited his resignation. "À bas le café!"

"I don't trouble to write at all," said Poons in German, "I simply don't go."

Presently the dinner came, and what a dinner it was. The (California) wine flowed like water, and this was true literally, for more than once Von Barwig was compelled to put water in the demijohn to make it last out. They all talked at once, and everybody ate, drank and made merry. Miss Husted sang a song!

After the rattle and banging of plates, knives and forks had subsided and the coffee had been brought in, Von Barwig was called upon to make a speech. Somehow or other his mind reverted to the last speech he had made, so many, many years ago, when he had accepted the conductorship of the Leipsic Philharmonic Orchestra. It seemed strange to him now, nearly twenty years later, that he should be called upon to speak on an almost similar occasion. Then, too, there had been a banquet. He made a few remarks appropriate to the occasion and finally drank a toast to the standard of musical purity.

This was Pinac's opportunity. "No, no, Von Barwig!" he said, "we are not fit to drink such a toast! We are in the gutter. It is you, my friend, you alone of all these present, who does not sink himself to play for money at a café on Liberty Street. To Von Barwig, the artist!"

The rattle of plates, knives and forks attested the popularity of this sentiment; then Fico began:

"It is you only who keeps up the standard." More applause. "You are the standard bearer, the general. You lead; we follow," at which the clapping was vociferous.

Von Barwig felt keenly the falsity of his position at that moment. He thought of the deception, the lie he was practising on them. He had sunk lower than they, far lower, for he was playing in a dime museum. He could not bear their praises; for he knew he did not deserve them. He inwardly determined to tell them the truth, but not at that moment, for he did not want to dampen their spirits. As the cognac and cigars were placed on the table Miss Husted rose grandly, and stated that the ladies would now withdraw; whereupon she and Jenny left the room, proudly curtseying themselves out. "La grande dame!" said Pinac as he bowed low to her. The men then talked over their prospects, their hopes, even getting so far as to discuss the opening programme. An idea occurred to Von Barwig, "Why not open with his symphony?" The men almost cheered at the idea, so he unlocked the little trunk and took it out. There it was, covered with the dust of years and almost coffee-coloured. As he took it out of the trunk, something fell out from between the pages and dropped upon the floor. He picked it up, and his heart stood still for a moment as he glanced at it, for it was a miniature portrait of his wife. He thrust it hastily in his pocket and went on distributing the parts of the symphony.

"You, the first violin, Pinac," and he handed him his part. "For you, Fico, the second violin. Poons, the 'cello, of course," and the men hurried to get their instruments.

Chapter Thirteen

It was late the following morning when Von Barwig returned from his interview with Van Praag. All the details had been settled satisfactorily, and his three friends were to be engaged. Von Barwig had not yet left the Museum; his sense of obligation to Costello was too great to permit him to desert him without notice, so it was understood that he was to leave at the end of the week. How Von Barwig welcomed the thought of that Saturday night, and it was only Wednesday!

When Von Barwig came in, the men were in his room practising their parts of the symphony. His arrival put an end to further work. They wanted to talk about their "grand new engagement," as Pinac called it.

Von Barwig produced some cigars that Van Praag had forced on him, and the men sat talking of their prospects, and smoking until the room looked like an inferno.

While they were debating as to where they should dine that night, there was a knock at the door, and, Von Barwig hastened to open it. A somewhat portly, rather well-dressed, middle-aged individual entered. He was followed by another person, a tall, lantern-jawed man of the artisan type, who looked around defiantly as he came into the room.

"Does Anton Von Barwig live here?" demanded the first comer.

Von Barwig did not know the gentleman who made the inquiry.

"Why, it is Schwarz! how do you do, Mr. Schwarz?" said Pinac, coming forward and shaking hands with him, and he then introduced him to Von Barwig as Mr. Wolf Schwarz, the Secretary of the Amalgamated Musical Association.

Mr. Schwarz then introduced his companion as Mr. Ryan, the representative of the Brickmakers' Union. "Shake hands with Professor Von Barwig, Mr. Ryan," said Schwarz. Mr. Ryan did so with such enthusiasm that Von Barwig was glad to withdraw his hand.

Mr. Schwarz was an Americanised German, far more American than the most dyed-in-the-wool, natural-born citizen of the United States. Had any one called him a German, he would have repudiated the suggestion as an insult. He knew the American Constitution backward, and he determined that others should know it, too. His demand for his rights as an American citizen was the predominating characteristic of his nature, for he was a born demagogue of the most pronounced type. It did not take Mr. Schwarz long to make clear the object of his visit.

"You don't come to our rooms very much, Von Barwig," he said.

Von Barwig pleaded stress of business as an excuse.

"If you had," went on Mr. Schwarz, taking up the thread of his remarks without noticing Von Barwig's apology, "you'd know that Van Praag and those fellows up at Harmony Hall are on the black-list."

"Black-list?" said Von Barwig apprehensively.

"Mr. Ryan here represents a delegation from the Brickmakers' Union," stated Mr. Schwarz, coughing and clearing his throat, thus indicating the importance of the statement that he was about to make.

"Well?" asked Von Barwig, who did not see the value of the information just furnished by Mr. Schwarz.

"Well," repeated Mr. Schwarz, "The Brickmakers' Union has just affiliated with our musical association."

"Music and bricks—affiliated!" The idea rather appealed to Von Barwig's sense of humour and he laughed. "Music and bricks," he repeated, but this attempt at pleasantry did not meet with much response from Mr. Schwarz. That gentleman merely shrugged his shoulders while Mr. Ryan, the brickmakers' delegate, contented himself with squirting some tobacco juice into the adjacent fireplace and tilting his hat, which he had neglected to remove, over one eye, while he surveyed Von Barwig with an unpleasant stare from the other, thus indicating that he wanted no nonsense.

"Music and bricks," repeated Von Barwig, who evidently enjoyed the incongruity of the combination. Then noticing that Ryan was standing he said with a smile, "Brother artist, be seated!" Pinac and Fico roared with laughter. Mr. Ryan sat down, mumbling to himself that that sort of sarcasm didn't go with him; he was a workman, not an artist. Von Barwig apologised and then, looking at Schwarz, waited for him to speak. A very awkward pause ensued.

"You've had an offer from the Harmony Hall Concerts, under the management of Van Praag," stated Schwarz.

"Yes," assented Von Barwig, who began to perceive for the first time that his visitors had come on a matter of more or less serious Import.

"Well," began Schwarz, "you've got to hold off for the present."

"I do not understand," said Von Barwig.

"You've got to throw up the job," broke in Mr. Ryan, emphasising the statement by allowing his walking stick to fall heavily on a pile of music which lay on the piano.

Von Barwig looked at him but did not speak.

"You can't go on," said Schwarz.

"Not while scabs are working there," added Mr. Ryan sententiously.

Von Barwig tried to speak but could not; words would not come. His heart had almost stopped beating. Finally he managed to gasp, "What does it mean; all this?"

"Our association has been notified that Van Praag is having his new music hall built with non-union bricks, and——"

"Scabs," broke in Mr. Ryan, once more banging the inoffensive music with his stick. "Scabs! We called out our men and they put in scab carpenters. The carpenters went out and the plumbers have gone out; they've all gone out, and now it's only fair—that—you should go out. Stick together and we'll win; in other words, 'united we stand, divided we fall.' Am I right, Schwarz?"

Mr. Schwarz did not commit himself as to the merits of the case; he was not there for that purpose. He was there to carry out the wishes of the association, so he merely contented himself with saying that the musicians would undoubtedly have to go out under the term of the affiliation.

"Music and bricks has got to stand by each other," said Mr. Ryan, unconsciously quoting Von Barwig. "They've got to, or there'll be no music; and no bricks."

Music and bricks, then, was no longer a joke. It was a reality, a dreadful impossibility that had become true; and Von Barwig's heart sank as he looked at his friends, and saw by their faces that they, too, realised what it meant. They were in the midst of a sympathetic strike; the question of the right or wrong of it did not appear. It was immaterial; right or wrong, they must go out because others went; those were the orders from headquarters.

"Of course, Von Barwig, you'll stand for whatever the Amalgamated stands for?" said Schwarz.

"You'll resign until the matter is settled, I presume?" queried Mr. Ryan. Von Barwig shook his head. A faint "no" issued from his throat, which had literally dried up from fear; the fear of losing the happiness he had had just now, the fear of going back to that dreaded night-drudgery again. All their hopes were shattered, their anticipations were not to be realised.

"Of course—I—I am of the Union. I stand by the Union—of course. I—but it's—it's hard!" Then with an effort, "It will not last long, eh?"

"No," said Mr. Ryan, "it won't last a month! We'll put them out of business if it does. They'll weaken, Mr. Barwig, you'll see! They'll weaken all right." The ashen appearance of Von Barwig's face, the abject despair he saw depicted there aroused the man's sympathy. "It won't be long, Mr. Barwig," he repeated in a softened voice. "I know it's hard, but what are we to do? If we don't stand together, we'll be swamped."

"That's right," said Schwarz.

"It ain't sympathy; it's self-defence, Barwig," declared Mr. Ryan, uttering what he thought was a great truth.

"Yes, yes," muttered Von Barwig. Hope had gone completely from him now.

"Self-defence," he repeated, and then he laughed bitterly. "The art of music progresses. Wagner should be glad that he is dead."

"Wagner? Who is Wagner?" inquired Mr. Ryan.

"No one, no one!" replied Von Barwig, shaking his head, "he did not belong to the Union——"

"Then he's a scab," remarked Mr. Ryan.

Von Barwig looked at him and burst out laughing, the laughter of despair. Pinac and Fico looked at each other. Von Barwig's laugh grated harshly on their ears; they did not like to see their beloved friend act in that manner. Pinac touched him gently on the arm and looked appealingly at him. Von Barwig nodded, then rising from his chair, with his habitual gentleness, suggested that the interview was at an end. Messrs. Schwarz and Ryan bowed themselves out and the four friends were left there alone with their misery.

Von Barwig turned to his friends. It was for them that his heart bled, for they had resigned their positions at his request. For the first time since their friendship he had been the cause of misfortune coming to them. He felt it more than all the disappointments that he had experienced during his stay in America. "I am accursed," he thought, "doomed always to disappointments, and I am now a curse to others, to those I love." He tried to tell them how grieved he was at their misfortune, but they would not allow him to apologise, so he sat down in his old armchair and tried to smoke, but he could not. His heart was as heavy as lead. They saw this and they felt for him; they felt his sufferings more than they did their own.

"We have resign from the café, yes, but we are glad, damn glad," said Pinac, lying like a true Gallic gentleman. "Von Barwig, I tell you we are deuced damn glad," he repeated with emphasis.

Von Barwig silently shook his hand and smiled.

"I said to hell with the café—I say it now!" ejaculated Fico. "The café to hell, and many of him!"

"My beautiful 'cello is wasted in that food hole," said Poons to Von Barwig in German, then he laughed and told him a funny story that he had read that day in the Fliegende Blätter. He did his best to make the old man laugh with him, but Von Barwig only smiled sadly. He did not speak; his heart was too heavy.

"It won't last long! You see, it won't last long!" said Pinac, again trying to comfort him. "Come, boys, we go upstairs and play. We play for you, Anton, eh?"

Von Barwig made no reply. The men looked at each other significantly and tried to cheer him up by striking up a song and marching around the room; but they saw that the iron had entered deep, deep into his soul, and that he was thoroughly disheartened.

"Come! We go and play; perhaps that will arouse him," whispered Pinac to the others. And they marched out of the room singing the refrain of one of the student glees that Von Barwig had taught them.

Beverly brings Hélène a wedding gift.

Von Barwig sat there quite still for a long time. His thoughts were formless. In a chaotic way he realised that he had played the game of life and had lost; he seemed to feel instinctively that the end had come. He had the Museum to go to, that could supply his daily needs, but he was tired, oh, so tired of the struggle. There was nothing to look forward to—nothing, nothing. He arose with a deep, deep sigh.

"I am tired," he said to himself, "tired out completely. I am like an old broken-down violin that can no longer emit a sound. My heart is gone; there is no sounding post; I am finished. I have been finished a long time, only I did not know it." He arose slowly from his chair and took his pipe off the mantelpiece. As he slowly filled it his eyes lighted on a wooden baton that lay on the mantelpiece. He took it up and looked at it. It was the baton with which he conducted his last symphony. He smiled and shook his head. "I am through; thoroughly and completely through," and he broke the conductor's wand in pieces and threw them into the fire. "That finishes me!" he said. "I am snapped; broken in little bits. I did not ask to live, but now,—now, I ask to die! To die, that is all I ask, to die." He took out the little miniature of his wife and looked at it long and tenderly. "Elene, Elene! My wife, where are you? If you knew what I go through you would come to me! Give me the sign I wait for so long, that I may find you."

He listened, but no answer came; then a new thought came to him.

"I go back home, home; for here I am a stranger; they do not know me. The way is long, so long—" and then he started, for he heard the strains of the second movement of his symphony which was being played in the room above. It brought him back to himself, and he listened—listened as one who hears a voice from the dead. It seemed to him that the requiem of all his hopes was being played. He was still looking at the picture of his wife when Jenny entered. She had come to fetch the lamp, to fill it with oil. The short winter afternoon was drawing to a close and the dusk was deepening into darkness. The red rays of the setting sun came in through the window and as it bathed him in its crimson glow it made a sort of a halo around the old man's head. Jenny gazed at him for a long time and was surprised that he did not speak; but Von Barwig was not conscious of her presence. She looked at him more closely and saw the tears in his eyes; then she came over to him and nestled closely by his side. In a moment her woman's instinct divined his need of sympathy and her heart went out to him.

"Don't look like that," she pleaded, "I can't bear to see it! I've always known that something troubled you, that you've something to bear that you've kept back from us. Tell me, tell me! Don't keep it to yourself, it's eating your heart out. You know I love you; don't—don't keep it back," and she placed her arm around his neck and wept as if her heart would break. Her action brought Von Barwig to himself and he patted her gently on the back. "Why, Jenny, my little Jenny! Yes, I know you love me, and I—I tell you. Yes, Jenny, I tell you——"

Jenny nestled closer to him; it was a sorrowful moment for the old man, and he needed some one to lead him into the light. Slowly, slowly, but surely the young girl led him out of his mental chaos. His heart had been perilously near the breaking point, but he could think more calmly now.

"I—when—I came over to this country I—I looked for some one that I never found. I have—no luck, Jenny, no luck," he said in a broken voice, "and I bring no luck to others." He paused and then went on: "I stay here no longer, Jenny. I go back; it's better! Yes, I go back to my own country."

"Oh, no, don't go back!" pleaded the girl.

"Yes, I go; I must go," the old man said.

She clung tightly to him now, as if she would not let him go. He smiled at her but shook his head. "It is better," he said gravely, "far better. I cannot trust myself here alone; it is too much alone! I love you all, but I am alone. There is an aching void which must be filled. I cannot trust myself alone any longer."

She did not understand him, nor did she inquire of him his meaning. She only clung to him, as if determined not to lose him.

"When you are married, Jenny," he went on, "I shall not be here. But keep well to the house, love your husband, stay at home. Don't search here, there, everywhere for excitement! The real happiness for the mother is always in the home; always, always! One imprudent step and the mother's happiness goes, and the father's, too," he added pathetically.

"Whose picture is that?" asked Jenny, as she caught sight of the miniature in Von Barwig's hand.

"The mother, my wife;" he said in a low, sad voice.

"Ah!" and Jenny looked closely at the picture.

"The mother who loved not the home, and from that's come all the sorrow! She loved not the home." Von Barwig's words came quickly now, and were interspersed with dry, inarticulate sobs. "The mother of my little girl, for whose memory I love you. Ah, keep to the home, Jenny, for God's sake! Always the home!"

Jenny nodded. "Where are they?" she asked, pointing to the portrait.

"Ah, where are they?" he almost sobbed. "For sixteen years I have not seen my own flesh and blood! He, my friend who did this to me, robbed me of them, and took them far, far away from me. I mustn't say more!"

Jenny understood; she no longer looked tenderly at the portrait. She pointed to it almost in horror. "She was not a good woman?"

Von Barwig was shocked. Here was the verdict of the world, through the mouth of a child. He had never thought of his wife as bad.

"She was a good woman; not bad, not bad! No, no, Jenny! I thought of nothing but my art, of music, of fame, fortune. One night, the night of the big concert, when I came home she had gone and she had taken with her my little Hélène. It was the night that symphony was played. Listen, you hear, you hear? It's the second movement. It was a wonderful success, but ah, Jenny, that night I won the world's applause, but I lost my own soul!"

The strains of the music came through the open door. Jenny looked at him. He was listening eagerly now. In the red glow of the late afternoon sun his eyes sparkled with unnatural excitement.

"It takes me home," he said, and then he looked at the picture. "Not bad; oh, no, Jenny; she is not bad!"

Jenny shook her head. She hated the woman from that moment.

"She is bad," she thought, "or how could she have done it?" But she did not speak, and the old man went on:

"I am not angry! No, mein Gott, no! I only want my little girl. Anything to have her back, my baby, my little baby girl, gone these sixteen years! My little baby!"

"Yes, but she wouldn't be a baby now," broke in Jenny.

Von Barwig, about to speak, stopped suddenly. "Of course not; I never thought of that!" Then he shook his head violently.

"I cannot think of her as anything but a baby!"

"Yes, but she'd be a grown-up young lady," insisted Jenny.

"How old was she when you—when she—when you left her."

"Three years and two months," said Von Barwig softly.

"Then she'd be nineteen," said Jenny, "just my age; big, grown-up young lady."

"She is my little baby," repeated Von Barwig plaintively. "I can see her now so plainly; always playing with her little doll—the doll with one eye out. That was the doll she loved, Jenny; the doll she had when I last saw her."

The old man was calm now. The idea that the girl was a grown-up young woman, although obvious enough, changed his train of thought. For the moment it took his attention from the immediate cause of his unhappiness, and brought his imagination into play.

"A grown-up young lady!" he mused. "Yes, of course! But I can't see her as grown up; I can't see her, Jenny. I can only remember her as a wee tot walking around with her one-eyed doll; the eye she kicked out! I remember that so well."

In spite of his misery, the old man laughed aloud as he recalled the circumstance that led up to the loss of the eye. The consternation in the face of the child as she handed him the piece of broken eye had made him laugh; and he laughed now hysterically as he recalled the incident. Jenny seeing him laugh, laughed too.

"Thank God he can still laugh," she thought.

"Ah, well!" he went on, drawing a deep breath. "They are gone, and I—look no more. My search is over, Jenny, over and done. But I go back; I see once more my Leipsic. There they know me! Here I am an outcast, a beggar."

Jenny could only shake her head and look at him helplessly. She realised that any effort she might make to influence him to change his plans would be useless; and more and more did she hate the woman who had been the cause of all his misery, the woman whose portrait he looked at so lovingly.

"A beggar," Von Barwig repeated to himself. "Yes, that's it! I can fall no lower, I give up!"

The fortune of the broken-spirited, broken-hearted old man was now at its lowest ebb; and he gave up the fight. There was a long silence. Jenny was thinking hard. What could she say or do; how could she help him?

A knock at the door broke the stillness, which had become almost oppressive.

Chapter Fourteen

"Come in," said Von Barwig wearily. He barely looked at the door as it opened. In the ordinary course of events it was likely to be the laundry boy, or Thurza with coal, or one of the musicians who lived in the house, or perhaps a collector. It might have been almost any one but the liveried footman who now stood at the door, hat in hand, with a look of inquiry upon his face. Von Barwig stared at the man in astonishment. Liveries in Houston Street were most uncommon.

"Excuse me, sir, I am looking for a Mr. Von Barwig," he said. "I was directed to come here. Is this the right place, sir?" The man's manner was polite enough, but there was a decided attitude of superiority in his somewhat supercilious tone. Jenny made her escape hastily.

Von Barwig could not collect his thoughts. He simply looked at the man and made no reply.

"He's a music master in the neighbourhood, I believe, sir," went on the servant. "A music master," he repeated.

"Yes, he was; but he is no more," said Von Barwig, who now realised that the man wanted to find him.

"Dead, sir?"

"No, I am Mr. Von Barwig. I teach, but I give up. You hear? I have finished; I give up, I give up!" he repeated in a voice quivering with emotion as he walked up to the window. There was such utter pathos in the old man's bearing that it caused even the footman to turn and look at the speaker more closely. There was a pause; the servant appeared uncertain what to do.

"Did you find him, Joles?" asked some one coming into the room. The voice was that of a young lady, who was accompanied by a little boy carrying a violin case. At the sound of her voice Von Barwig started as if he had been shot, and with a half articulate cry he turned and gazed in the direction from whence the voice came. He saw in the dim twilight, for the sun had now nearly gone down, the half-blurred vision of a young lady dressed in the height of fashion. Her features he could not distinguish, as her back was to the window, but he could see that she was a handsome young woman of about twenty years of age. As Von Barwig turned toward her she looked at her note-book and asked if he were Herr Von Barwig.

The old man bowed, tried to speak, but could not. His tongue cleaved to the roof of his mouth. He pointed to a chair, and indicated that she should be seated. She noticed his embarrassment and addressed the servant.

"You had better wait for me downstairs, Joles," she said quickly. Then as the man closed the door behind him she turned to Von Barwig, and spoke in a rich, warm, contralto voice that vibrated with youth and health. "You teach music, do you not? At least they said you did!"

Von Barwig swallowed a huge lump in his throat. "I did, but—not now; I have given up." She looked at him but did not seem to understand. "Lieber Gott, Lieber Gott!" broke from him in spite of his efforts to suppress himself. "Elene, Elene!" Then he looked more closely at her and shook his head.

"So you are not teaching any longer? Ah, what a pity!" she said. "They speak so well of you in the neighbourhood. Perhaps I may be able to induce you to change your mind!"

Von Barwig was now slowly gaining mastery over himself.

"Perhaps," he said, with a great effort at self-control.

"You do not know me, Herr Von Barwig?"

The old man's eyes glowed like live coals. "Elene, Elene!" he murmured. "The living image! Lieber Gott, the living image!"

"I am Miss Hélène Stanton," she said with unconscious dignity. "You may have heard of me," she added with a smile.

Miss Stanton's name was a household word in New York, especially in that quarter of the city where her large charities had done so much to alleviate the sufferings of the poor. Von Barwig had heard the name many times, but at that moment he did not recognise it, although it was the name of the greatest heiress in New York.

His ear caught the word "Hélène" and he could only repeat it over and over again.

"Elene, Elene!"

"Hélène," corrected Miss Stanton.

"Ah, in my language it is Elene; yes, Elene!" Then a great hope took possession of him. "Some one has sent you to me?" he asked. "Some one has sent you?"

"Not exactly," she replied, "but you were well recommended." The old man's manner, his emotion, his earnestness, somewhat embarrassed her. "Why does he look at me so earnestly?" she thought. Perhaps it was a mannerism peculiar to a man of his years.

Then she went on: "I am connected with mission work in the neighbourhood here. I go among the poor a great deal—"

"Ah, charity!" he said. "Yes." And then he went up to the window and pulled up the blinds as far as they would go that he might get more of the fast-fading light.

"I saw you a few days ago at Schumein's, the music publishers, and your name was suggested to me by one of the young ladies at the mission as music master."

"Ah, you desire to take lessons?" he asked eagerly.

Miss Stanton smiled. "No, the child. Come here, Danny," and the boy came toward her.

Von Barwig had seen no one but her. The little boy had remained in the corner of the room, where the shadow of evening made it too dark to distinguish the outline of his form.

"Ah, the boy?" he said with a tone or disappointment in his voice. "Not you, the boy? He needs instruction?" Then he looked at her again. It was too dark for him to see the colour of her eyes. He went to the door. "Jenny," he called, only he pronounced it "Chenny"; "a lamp if you please."

"How courteous and dignified his manner is!" thought Miss Stanton, "even in the most commonplace and trivial details of life a man's breeding shows itself."

"We think the boy is a genius," she said aloud, "but his parents are very poor and cannot afford to pay for his tuition."

"It is a poor neighbourhood," said Von Barwig, "but there will be no charge. I will teach him for—for you!" He had already forgotten that he had decided to take no more pupils.

"I have taken charge of his future," said Miss Stanton pointedly; "and of course shall defray all the expense of his tuition myself. I have the consent of his parents——"

Jenny came in with a large lamp and placed it on the piano. Von Barwig could now see his visitor's face, and his heart beat rapidly.

"Tell me," he said, forcing himself to be calm, "your father and mother? Are they——?"

Miss Stanton drew herself up slightly. "I am speaking of his parents," she said.

"Yes, his parents, of course! Yes, but your father—your mother," he asked insistently. "Is she—is she—living?"

The deep earnestness and anxiety with which Von Barwig put this question made it clear to Miss Stanton that it was not merely idle curiosity that prompted him to ask, so stifling her first impulse to ignore the question altogether she replied rather abruptly:

"No, she is not living." Then she added formally, "but that is quite apart from the subject we are discussing."

Von Barwig did not hear the latter part of her answer. His eyes were riveted on her. He could only repeat, "Dead—dead." Then he looked at her and slowly shook his head in mournful tenderness, repeating the words, "Dead—dead."

To her own surprise Miss Stanton did not resent this sympathy.

"I take an especial interest in this boy because his sister is one of the maids in my father's home," she began.

Von Barwig's face fell. "Ah," he said, "you have a father. Fool that I am," he went on. "Yes, of course; you have a father, and it is not——"

At this point Miss Stanton made up her mind that Herr Von Barwig did not understand English quite as well as he spoke it, for she repeated rather sharply this time that she was discussing the boy's musical education, not her own. Then she added that there remained only the question of terms to discuss and she would detain him no longer.

Von Barwig did not hear her. He could only mutter to himself in German, "A father, she has a father!" Then he told the boy to call the next afternoon and he would hear him play. The lad thanked him and went home to his parents.

After the boy's departure, Miss Stanton repeated her request to be allowed to discuss the terms for the boy's tuition; and when the music master made no response she said: "Very well; whatever your charges are I will pay them."

"There will be none," said Von Barwig decidedly.

"But I wish to defray the entire expense," said Miss Stanton, greatly mystified at Von Barwig's refusal to receive payment for his work.

"I cannot take money from you," he said.

"Cannot take money from me? I do not understand you!" and Miss Stanton arose. "Please explain." There was an awkward pause.

Von Barwig saw that he had made a mistake. "I like to help all children," he said somewhat lamely. "You are engaged in work of charity; I do my share," he added.

The explanation only partially satisfied her, and she regarded him doubtfully.

Von Barwig realised now that he had shown himself over-anxious. "I do something for him, I shall take an interest in him," he said, "because you brought him here."

"What a strange man!" she thought as she looked at him in surprise. "A poor, struggling musician with the air and grace of a nobleman conferring a favour on a lady of his own class!" Then she looked around the studio with its old-fashioned piano and the stacks of old music lying about here and there; a violin with one or two bows and resin boxes in the corner, some music stands, Poons's 'cello case, a broken metronome; and on the walls some cheap pictures of the old musicians. In a fit of generosity, Miss Husted had bought them and put them on the walls. Von Barwig had not the heart to remove them, although cheap art did not appeal to him.

Miss Stanton looked at them now, and then at him, and a deep feeling of pity came into her heart. "He has so little," she thought, "yet he is willing to give; and he gives with the air of a prince!"

"I cannot allow you to—to—" she began. "You are not rich, and yet you wish to teach for nothing. Surely your time is—is valuable——"

"I have more than I need," he replied with quiet dignity.

The heiress to twenty-five millions felt the rebuff and she liked him all the more for it, but she would not accept his offer without an effort to prevent the sacrifice.

"Why should you sacrifice yourself?" she asked.

"It is no sacrifice to—ah—please, please! Put it down to the whim of an old man—what you will; but don't deny me this pleasure! Don't, please!"

His pleading look disarmed her and she gave up trying to dissuade him.

"Very well," she said. "It shall be as you wish."

She could not help liking him, she said to herself. His manner, at first a little embarrassing, now interested her strangely. He reminded her of a German nobleman she had met in Washington at the German Embassy. His grace, his bearing, his whole demeanour was noble and dignified in the extreme. Under ordinary circumstances, she would have regarded his offer to teach her little charge for nothing as a gross breach of politeness, but with him she did not feel angry in the least.

"It's curious," she said, "I came here with a good object in view; and you calmly appropriate my good intentions and make them your own, and what is still more strange I allow you to do so."

"Ah, don't say that!" still the tearful, pleading voice that moved her so.

"Yes, I allow you to do so," she persisted, and then she added, "Do you know, Herr Barwig, I like you, in spite of a strong temptation to be very angry with you?"

She had now moved around to the piano.

"You know," she said enthusiastically, "I love music and musical people. Some of the very greatest artists come to my father's musicales."

"My father," the words made Von Barwig's heart sink. "My father!"

She sat down at the piano; he raised the lamp and looked into her eyes, and as he stood there with the lamp uplifted she looked into his face.

"Of whom do you remind me?" she said quickly. "Don't move——"

There was a deep silence. The old man could hear his heart beat.

"Of whom, of whom?" he gasped. "Go on; tell me! Try to remember! For God's sake try to remember!"

"There, now, it's gone!" she said. "I can't think," she added after a pause, greatly surprised at his look. "You know somehow or other I always feel at home with musicians. What a busy little studio this is," she went on, looking around. "You're quite successful, aren't you?"

Von Barwig nodded.

"It must be very gratifying to earn a lot of money through your own efforts; not for the mere money, but for the success. I'm glad you're successful!" she said with such feeling that it surprised even herself.

"Why?" asked Von Barwig. "Why are you glad?"

"I don't know. I suppose—" she paused. She did not like to say it was because she had thought he was very poor and was delighted to find that he was not; so she said it was because of his kindness to the boy, "and because I—I love music," she added.

"You play?" he inquired.

"A little."

"Play for me." The words came almost unbidden. It was an impulse to which he responded because he could not help it. "Play for me," he pleaded.

She ran her hands idly over the keys. "I ought to be angry," she thought, "he, a mere music master, to ask me to play for him as if he were an equal."

But the gentle expression on the old man's face as he regarded her with a tender smile was so full of hallowed affection and respect that she could not utter the words which came to her lips. She merely looked at him and returned his smile with one of her own and Heaven opened for the old man. She began to play.

"You know I play very little," she said.

"I love to hear music from your fingers," was all he could say.

Miss Stanton listened a moment.

"What music is that?" She heard the men upstairs playing. "It's very pretty," she added. They both listened for a few moments. "It's really beautiful! Can I get it? I'd like to know that melody."

"I make for you a piano score. It's the music they played the night that she, that she—" his breath came quickly. "Lieber Gott! Elene; so like Elene, so like!" he said, as he gazed at her.

Miss Stanton took off her gloves and began to play. She had hardly struck the opening chords of a simple pianoforte piece when there came a knock at the door. Before Von Barwig could speak a man entered. She stopped playing and Von Barwig's heart sank as he recognised the collector for the pianoforte house.

"I am engaged, sir. If you please, another time!"

"I've called for the piano," said the man, taking some papers out of his pocket.

"Another time, for God's sake!" pleaded Von Barwig. "Please go on, Miss Stanton."

"I want the piano or the money," said the man automatically.

"I have not—now. To-morrow I will call."

"The money or the piano is my instructions," said the collector. Von Barwig stood as if stricken dumb. The shame, the degradation were too great. He appealed to the man with outstretched hands. Tears were in his eyes, but the man did not look at him; he went into the hall, opened the front door, and yelled out, "Come on, Bill——"

Miss Stanton arose from the piano and walked over to the window. "It is a very busy view from here, isn't it?" she said; "gracious, how crowded the streets are!"

Poor Von Barwig's cup of misery was now full. She had been a witness of his poverty. His lies about his success and his pupils were all laid bare to her; he was disgraced forever in her eyes. He had lied to her, and she had found him out.

The collector came back with the men and the process of moving the piano began. Von Barwig's sense of humour came to his rescue.