His voice rolled out without effort, continuous as a flowing 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: “You think you have a great voice, eh? All you have to do to take the great roles 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.”