wailed in a kind of dying scream; the mandolins chirped away as though they knew no tiring. Burns's red butcher's fists had always made Finch rather sick as they hovered over the strings. The mandolin seemed like some puny little animal he was about to slaughter.
They were in the street again. They were all yelling together. They had no reason to raise their voices. Only some primitive instinct told them it was the time for yelling. They straggled along the snowy street, sometimes in file, sometimes strung across the roadway. The strange snow light—the moon had become too pale to be accounted anything more than a wan presence in the paling sky—lent an unearthly quality to their figures. Their cries seemed the cries of spirits rather than of men.
They did not know where they were going. Up one street and down another, and, coming upon the first street again, they traversed it for the second time without recognizing it. Each variation and eccentric curve was marked on the purity of the snow. Sometimes they were separated into two parties, two going in one direction and three in another. Then the far-away shouting of one group would startle into a panic the other, and they would run, calling each other by name, until they met again on some corner, and the little band would be reunited.
Once the flautist was lost by the other four. It was some little time before they noticed that one of their number was absent, though they realized that all was not well with them. From their hoarse, deep-toned shouts one high-pitched tenor cry was missing. But at last their loss was borne in upon them. They stood stock-still, staring blankly at each other. Who was gone?
Then, all at once, they knew it was Meech.
"Meech! Meech!" they shouted, and they began to run in a body, calling his name and reeling as they ran.
There was no answer, so they called him by his Christian name.
"Sinden! Sinden! Hi, Sinden Meech!"
At last they found him. He had wandered into a wide, well-lit street of the prosperous. His arms were clasped
