ing stream, grave and round as the deep tone of a temple bell. It increased in volume until the hollow vibrated; the sound, rather than coming from a single throat, seemed to dwell in the air, to be the harmony of evening made audible. The simple melody rose and fell; the simple words became portentous, burdened with the tragedy of vain longing, lost felicity. The dead past rose again like a colored mist over the sordid reality of the present; it drifted desirable and near across the hill; it soothed and mocked the heart—and dissolved.
The silence that followed the song was sharply broken by a thin querulous question; a tenuous bent figure stumbled across the open.
"Who's singing?" he demanded.
"That's French Janin," Peebles told Harry Baggs; "he's blind."
"I am," the latter responded—"Harry Baggs."
The man came closer, and Baggs saw that he was old and incredibly worn; his skin clung in dry yellow patches to his skull, the temples were bony caverns, and the pits of his eyes blank shadows. He felt forward with a siccated hand, on which veins were twisted like blue worsted over fleshless tendons, gripped Harry Baggs' shoulder, and lowered himself to the ground.
"Another song," he insisted; "like the last. Don't try any cheap show."
The boy responded immediately; his serious voice rolled out again in a spontaneous tide.
"'Hard times,'" Harry Baggs sang; "'hard times, come again no more.'"
The old man said:
