sought. Harry Baggs saw people on the porch; he recognized a man's voice that he had heard there before. On the right of the drive a thick maple tree cast a deep shadow, but beyond it a pool of clear moonlight extended to the house. He started forward, but Janin dragged him into the gloom of the maple.
"Sing here," he whispered in the boy's ear; "see, the window—Deh vieni alla finestra."
Harry Baggs stood at the edge of the shadow; his throat seemed to thicken, his voice expire.
"No," he protested weakly; "you must speak first."
He felt the old man shaking under his hand and a sudden desperate calm overtook him.
He moved forward a little and sang the first phrase of the Serenade.
A murmur of attention, of surprised amusement, arose from the porch; then, as his voice gained in bigness, flowed rich and thrilling and without effort from his deep powerful lungs, the murmur died away. The song rose toward its end; Harry Baggs saw nothing but the window above him; he put all the accumulated feeling, the longing, of the past miserable years into his ending.
A silence followed, in which Harry Baggs stood with drooping head. Then an unrestrained patter of applause followed; figures advanced. French Janin gave the boy a sharp unexpected shove into the radiance beyond the tree.
"Go on and on," he breathed; "and never come back any more!"
He turned and shambled rapidly away into the shadows, the obscurity, that lined the road.
