"You think you have a great voice, eh? All you have to do to take the great rôles is open your mouth!"
"I hadn't thought of any of that," Baggs responded. "I sing because—well, it's just natural; no one has said much about it."
"You have had no teaching, that's plain. Your power leaks like an old rain barrel. What are you doing here?"
"Tramping."
Harry Baggs looked about, suddenly aware of the dark pit of being into which he had fallen. The fires died sullenly, deserted except for an occasional recumbent figure. Peebles had disappeared; Dake lay in his rags on the ground; Runnel rocked slowly, like a pendulum, in his ceaseless pain.
"Tramping to the devil!" he added.
"What started you?" French Janin asked.
"Jail," Harry Baggs answered.
"Of course you didn't take it," the blind man commented satirically; "or else you went in to cover some one else."
"I took it, all right—eighteen dollars." He was silent for a moment; then: "There was something I had to have and I didn't see any other way of getting it. I had to have it. My stepfather had money that he put away—didn't need. I wanted an accordion; I dreamed about it till I got ratty, lifted the money, and he put me in jail for a year.
"I had the accordion hid. I didn't tell them where, and when I got out I went right to it. I played some sounds, and—after all I'd done—they weren't any good. I broke it up—and left."
