I believe Mrs. Kale would have let me stay on free almost indefinitely; for she was a kind-hearted soul, much imposed on by her boarders. But I had been playing the gentleman there, and I could not bring myself to come down in her esteem. I really did not know whether I should be able to continue to pay her; so when my time was up, I moved again, to my landlady's great surprise, and she thought me stuck up and ungrateful, and was a little hurt over it, when, in fact, I only did not want to cheat her, and was moving out to the poorest part of the city, to a little house on which I had observed, one afternoon during one of my strolls, the notice of a room for rent at a dollar a week. I think a rose-bush carefully trained over the door decided me to take it. It gave me a bit of home-feeling. The violet, of course, is in color and delicacy the half-ethereal emblem of the tenderest sentiment of the heart. "The violets all withered when my father died," sighed poor Ophelia. And next to violets, a rose-bush, growing in the sun and dew, has ever stood to me for the purest sentiment that the heart can hold.

I heard shortly afterward of the engagement of Miss Lilian Poole to the man she used to laugh at; but after a single wave of mortification that Peck should have won where I had lost, I did not mind it. I went out to look at the sunny house with the trees and the rose-bushes about it and wonder how I could meet Miss Leigh.

The room I took when I left Mrs. Kale's was only a cupboard some nine feet by six in the little house I have mentioned; but it was spotlessly clean, like the kind-looking, stout, blue-eyed Teuton woman who, with skirt tucked up, came to the door when I applied for lodging, and, as the price was nearer my figure than any other I had seen, I closed with Mrs. Loewen, and the afternoon I left Mrs. Kale's sent my trunk over in advance. It held the entire accumulation of my life. There was something about the place and the woman that attracted me. As poor as the house was, it was beyond the squalid quarter and well out in the edge of the city, with a bit of grass before it, and there were not only plants in the windows well cared for; but there was even a rose-bush beside the door making a feeble attempt to clamber over it with the aid of strings and straps carefully adjusted.

The only question my landlady asked me was whether I was a musician, and when I told her no, but that I was very fond of music, she appeared satisfied. Her husband, she said, was a drummer.

I asked if I might bring my dog, and she assented even to this.

"Elsa was fond of animals," she said.

When I bade good-by to Mrs. Kale and my friends at the boarding-house, I was pleased at the real regret they showed at my leaving. Miss Pansy and Miss Pinky came down to the drawing-room in their "best" to say good-by; Miss Pinky with her "scratch" quite straight. And Miss Pansy said if they ever went back home she hoped very much I would honor them by coming to see them, while Miss Pinky, with a more practical turn, hoped I would come and see them "there—and you may even bring your dog with you," she added, with what I knew was a proof of real friendship. I promised faithfully to come, for I was touched by the kindness of the two old ladies who, like myself, had slipped from the sphere in which they had belonged, and I was rather grim at the reflection that they had been brought there by others, while I had no one to blame but myself—a solemn fact I was just beginning to face.

When I walked out of the house I was in a rather low state of mind. I felt that it was the last day when I could make any pretension to being a gentleman. I had been slipping down, down, and now I was very near the bottom. So I wandered on in the street with Dix at my heels and my pistol in my pocket.

Just then a notice of a concert, placarded on a wall, caught my eye, and I gave myself a shake together as an unmitigated ass, and determined suddenly that I needed some amusement and that a better use for the pistol would be to sell it and go to the concert. 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 took Dix home and 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. No one appeared to pay much attention to him, and he appeared oblivious of all but his drums. Now he leant over them and listened to their throbbing, now he beat as if the whole world depended on it. 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 wakened 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 good-looking 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 back—and 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, and 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 won't——"

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 over my shoulder looked him in the face.

"I beg your pardon."

"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 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 door-bell 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 newcomers: 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 flock of little 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 structures.

I took the trouble to go by that day and look at the house on the corner. It was as sunny as ever. And when on my way back to my office I passed Miss Leigh, the central figure of a group of fresh looking girls, I felt that the half shy smile of recognition which she gave me was a shaft of light to draw my hopes to something better than I had known. Dix was with me, and he promptly picked out his friend and received from her a greeting which, curiously enough, raised my hopes out of all reason. I began to feel that the dog was a link between us.