the pistol would be to sell it and go to the I would, at least, be a gentleman once more, and then to-morrow I could start afresh. So I hunted up a pawnshop and raising from the villain who kept it a few dollars on my pistol, had a good supper and then went to the symphony. As it happened, I got one of the best seats in the house. It was a revelation to me-a revolution in my thoughts and feelings: the great audience, gay with silks and flowers and jewels, filling up all the space about and above me rising up to the very top of the vast auditorium. I did not have time at first to observe them, I only felt them; for just as I entered the Director came out and the audience applauded. It exhilarated me like wine; I felt as if it had been myself they were applauding. Then the music began: The "Tannhauser Overture." It caught me up and bore me away: knighthood, and glory, and love were all about me; the splendor of the contest; the struggle in which a false step, a cowardly weakness might fling away the world; the reward that awaited the victor, and the curse if he gave way, till I found myself dazzled, amazed, and borne down by the deluge of harmonious sound-and could do nothing but lie drifting at the mercy of the whelming tide, and watch, half-drowned, whatever object caught my eye. The first thing I took in was the tall old Drummer who towered above the great bank of dark bodies with swaying arms. Still and solemn he appeared out of the mist, and seemed like some landmark which I must hold on to if I would not be swept away. I held on to him and felt somehow as if he were the one to whom the Director looked the centre of all the music and pomp and mystery, and I must keep him in sight.

I don't know much of what came on the programme after that; for I was waked by the storm of applause which followed and during the intermission I looked about at the audience around me. They filled the house from floor to roof; every seat was occupied, and the boxes looked like banks of flowers. All the faces were strange to me, though, and I was beginning to feel lonely again, and was turning to my old Drummer, when, sweeping the boxes, my eye fell on a girl who caught me at once. She was sitting a little forward looking

across toward the orchestra with so serious an expression on her lovely face that I felt drawn to her even before I took in that she was the girl I had seen on the train and whom I had handed into her carriage. As I gazed at her this came to me and with it such a warm feeling about my heart as I had not had in a long time. I looked at the men about her, one of whom was the clergyman, Dr. Capon, and the next instant all my blood was boiling; there, bending down over her, talking into her ear, so close to her that she had to sit forward to escape his polluting touch, was the gambler whom I had heard say not three weeks before that every American girl was open to a proposal from him. I don't know really what happened after that. I only remember wishing I had my pistol backand being glad that I had pawned it, not sold it; for I made up my mind anew in that theatre that night to live and succeed, and preserve that girl from that adventurer. When the concert was over I watched the direction they took, and made my way through the crowd to the exit by which they would go into the foyer. There I waited and presently they came along. She was surrounded by a little party and was laughing heartily over something one of them had just said, and was looking, in the rich pink wrap which enveloped her, like a rich pink rosebud. I was gazing at her intently, and caught her eye, and no doubt struck by my look of recognition, she bowed. She had not really thought of me, she was still thinking of what had been said, and it was only a casual bow to some one in a crowd who knows you and catches your eye; but it was a bow, and it was a smiling one, but again that warm feeling surged about my heart which had come when I met her on the street. The next second that fellow came along. He was taller than most of the crowd, and well dressed, was really a handsome enough fellow but for his cold eyes and hard look. The eyes were too bold and the chin not bold enough. He was walking beside a large, blondish girl with shallow blue eyes, who appeared much pleased with herself or with him, but at the moment he was bowing his adieux to her while she was manifestly trying to hold on to him.

"I don't think you are nice a bit," I heard her say, petulantly, as they came

up to me. "You have not taken the least notice of me to-night."

This he evidently repudiated, for she pouted and smiled up at him. "Well, then, I'll excuse you this time, but you needn't be running after her. She wont

I did not hear the rest. I was thinking of the girl before me.

He was looking over the heads of the people before him, and the next moment was elbowing his way to overtake my young lady. Close to him in the crowd, as he came on, stood Mrs. Starling's daughter, painted, and in her best finery, and I saw her imploring eyes fastened on him eagerly. He glanced at her and she bowed with a gratified light dawning in her face. I saw his face harden. He cut her dead. Poor girl! I saw her pain and the look of disappointment as she furtively followed him with her eyes. He pushed on after my young lady. But I was ahead of him. Just before he reached her, I slipped in and when he attempted to push by I stood firm before him.

"Beg pardon," he said, trying to put me aside to step ahead of me. I turned my head and looked him in the face.

"I beg your pardon.”

66

"Oh!" he said. "How do? Let me by."

"To ply your old trade?" I asked, looking into his eyes, over my shoulder.

"Ah!" I saw the rage come into his face and he swore some foreign oath. He put his hand on my shoulder to push me aside; but I half turned and looked him straight in the eyes and his grasp relaxed. He had felt my grip once-and he knew I was not afraid of him, and thought I was a fool. And his hand fell.

I walked in front of him and kept him back until the party with my young lady in it had passed quite out of the door, and then I let him by. For that evening, at least, I had protected her.

I walked to my lodging with a feeling of more content than I had had in a long time. My heart had a home though I had none. It was as if the shell in which I had been cramped so long were broken and I should at last step out into a new world. I had a definite aim, and one higher than I ever had had before. I was in love with that girl and I made up my mind to win her. As I walked along through the gradually

VOL. XLV.-66

emptying streets my old professor's words came to me. They had been verified. I reviewed my past life and saw as clearly as if in a mirror my failures and false steps. I had moped and sulked with the world; I had sat in my cubby hole of an office with all my talents as deeply buried as if I had been under the mounds of Troy, and had expected men to unearth me as though I had been treasure.

It may appear to some that I exaggerated my feeling for a girl whom I scarcely knew at all. But love is the least conventional of passions; his victory the most unexpected and unaccountable. He may steal into the heart like a thief or burst in like a robber. The zephyr is not so wooing, the hurricane not so furious. Samson and Hercules lose their strength in his presence and, shorn of their power, surrender at discretion. Mightier than Achilles, wilier than Ulysses, he leads them both captive, and, behind them in his train, the long line of captains whom Petrarch has catalogued as his helpless slaves. Why should it then. be thought strange that a poor, weak, foolish, lonely young man should fall before him at his first onset! I confess, I thought it foolish, and yet so weak was I that I welcomed the arrow that pierced my heart, and as I sauntered homeward through the emptying streets, I hugged to my breast the joy that I loved once more.

As I was on the point of ringing the doorbell there was a heavy step behind me, and there was my old Drummer coming along. He turned in at the little gate. And I explained that I was his new lodger and had been to hear him play.

"Ah! You mean to hear the orchestra?" "No, I don't. I meant, to hear you-I went to the concert, but I enjoyed you most.”

"Ah!" he chuckled at the flattery, and let me in, and taking a survey of me, invited me to come and have a bit of supper with him, which I accepted. His wife came in and waited on us, and he told her what I had said, with pleasure, and she laughed over it and rallied him and accepted it, and accepted me instantly as an old friend. It gave me a new feeling.

A few minutes later there was another arrival. A knock on the street door, and the mother smiling and winking at her husband, went and let in the new comers:

a plump, round-cheeked girl, the mingled likeness of her two parents, with red cheeks, blue eyes, smooth flaxen hair and that heifer-like look of shyness and content which Teuton maidens have, and behind her a strapping looking young fellow with powerful shoulders, and a neck cased in a net of muscles, a clear pink skin and blue eyes, and with a roll in his gait partly the effect of his iron muscles and partly of mere bashfulness. I was introduced and the first thing the mother did was to repeat delightedly the compliment I had paid the father. It had gone home, and the simple way the white teeth shone around that little circle and the pride the whole family took in this poor bit of praise, told their simplicity and warmed my heart. The father and mother were evidently pleased with their daughter's young man for the mother constantly rallied the daughter about Otto and Otto about her, drawing the father in with sly looks and knowing tosses of her head, and occasionally glancing at me to see if I too took in the situation. Although I did not yet know a word of their language, I could understand perfectly what she was saying, and I never passed an evening that gave me a better idea of family happiness, or greater satisfaction. When I went up to my little room I seemed, somehow, to have gotten into a world of reality and content: a new world. I awaked in a new world-the one I had reached the night before: the land of hope and content-and when I came down stairs I was as fresh as a shriven soul, and I walked out into the street with Dix at my heel, as though I owned the earth.

The morning was as perfect as though God had just created light. The sky was as blue and the atmosphere as clear as though the rain that had fallen had washed away with the smoke all impurity whatsoever, and scoured the floor of Heaven afresh.

Elsa, with her chequered skirt turned back and a white apron about her comely figure, was singing as she polished the outer steps, before going to her work in a box factory, and the sun was shining upon her bare head with its smooth hair, and upon the little rose-bush by the door, turning the rain-drops that still hung on it into jewels. She stopped and petted Dix, who had followed me down stairs, and Dix, who, like

his master, loved to be petted by a pretty woman, laid back his ears and rubbed his head against her. And, an hour later, a group of little muddy boys with their books in their hands had been beguiled by a broad puddle on their way to school and were wading in the mud and laughing over the spatters and splotches they were getting on their clothes and ruddy faces. As I watched them, one who had been squeezed out of the fun and stood on the sidewalk looking on and laughing, suddenly seized with fear or envy, shouted that if they did "not come on, Mith Thelly would keep them in"; and, stricken with a sudden panic, the whole little flock of sand-pipers started off and ran as hard as their dumpy legs would carry them around the corner. I seemed to be emancipated.

I made my breakfast on a one-cent loaf of bread, taking a little street which, even in that section, was a back street, to eat it in, and for butter amused myself watching a lot of little children (among the last of whom I recognized my muddy boys, who must have found another puddle) lagging in at the door of a small old frame building, which I knew must be their school, though I could not understand why it should be in such a shanty when all the public schools I had seen were the most palatial struct

ures.

I took the trouble to go by that day and look at the house on the corner. It was as sunny as ever.

XVII

ENTER PECK

IT happened that the building in which I had taken an office bore a somewhat questionable reputation. I had selected it because it was cheap, and it was too late when I discovered its character. I had no money to move. The lawyers in it were a nondescript lot-criminal practitioners, strawbail givers, haunters of police courts, etc.; and the other occupants were as bad—adventurers with wild-cat schemes, cranks, visionaries with fads, frauds, gamblers, and thieves in one field or another, with doubtless a good sprinkling of honest men among them.

It was an old building and rather out of

the line of the best growth of the city, but in a convenient and crowded section. The lower floor was occupied with pawn shops and ticket-scalpers' offices, on the street; and at the back, in a sort of annex on an alley, was a saloon known as Mick Raffity's; the owner being a solid, doublejointed son of Erin, with blue eyes as keen as tacks; and over this saloon was the gambling house where I had been saved by finding Pushkin.

On the second floor, the best offices were a suite occupied by a lawyer named McSheen, whom I had also seen in the gambling house, and whom I was to come to know very well.

Coll McSheen was a person of considerable distinction, after its own kind, as was the shark created with other fish of the sea after its kind: a lawyer of unusual shrewdness, a keen political boss, and a successful business man. He occupied a large suite of offices in the building in which I had rented a cubby-hole looking out on a narrow well opposite the rear room of his suite. McSheen was a large, brawny man, with a broad face, a big nose, blue eyes, grizzled black hair, a tight mouth and a coarse fist. He would have turned the scales at two hundred, and he walked with a step as light as a sick-nurse's. The first time I ever saw him was when I ran into him suddenly in a winding, unswept back stairway that came down on an alley from the floor below mine and was used mainly by those in a hurry, and I was conscious even in the dim light that he gave me a look of great keenness. As he appeared in a hurry I gave way to him, with a "Beg pardon for my unintentional jostle, to which he made no reply except a grunt. I, however, took a good look at him as he passed along under a street lamp, with his firm yet noiseless step-as noiseless as a cat's-and the heavy neck and bulk gave me a sense of his brute strength, which I never lost afterward. I soon came to know that he was a successful jury-lawyer with a gift of eloquence, and a knack of insinuation, and that he was among the most potent of the political bosses of the city, with a power of manipulation unequalled by any politician in the community. He had good manners and a ready smile. He was the attorney or legal agent for a number of wealthy concerns, among them the Argand estate, and

had amassed a fortune. He was also "the legal adviser" of one of the afternoon papers, the Courier, in which, as I learned later, he held, though it was not generally known, a large and potent interest. He was now looming up as the chief candidate of the popular party for Mayor, an office which he expected to secure a few months later. He was interested in a part of the street-car system of the city, that part in which "the Argand estate" held the controlling interest, and which was, to some extent, the rival system of that known as the "West Line," in which Mr. Leigh held a large interest. I mention these facts because detached as they appear, they have a strong bearing on my subsequent relation to McSheen, and a certain bearing on my whole future.

My first real meeting with him gave me an impression of him which I was never able to divest myself of. I was in my little dark cupboard of an office very lonely and reading hard to keep my mind occupied with some other subject than myself, when the door half opened quietly, with or without a preliminary knock I never could tell which, and a large man insinuated himself in at it and, after one keen look, smiled at me. I recalled afterward how catlike his entrance was. But at the moment I was occupied in gauging him. Still smiling he moved noiselessly around and took his stand with his back to the one window.

"You are Mr. Glave?" he smiled. "Glad to see you." He had not quite gotten rid of the interrogation.

I expressed my appreciation of his good will and with, I felt, even more sincerity than his; for I was glad to see any one.

"Always glad to see young lawyersspecially bright ones." Here I smiled with pleasure that he should so admirably have 'sized me up," as the saying goes.

"You are a lawyer also?" I hazarded. "Yes. Yes. I see you are studious. I always like that in a young man—gives him breadth-scope."

I assented and explained that I had been in politics a little also, all of which he appeared to think in my favor. And so it went on till he knew nearly all about me. In fact, I became quite communicative. It had been so long since I had had a lawyer to talk with. I found him to be a remarkably well-informed man, and with