There was a pause while the juggler, standing at one end of the platform, seemed to run over in his mind the treasures of his _répertoire_. The mellow lamplight shone in his reflective brown eyes, cast down as he twisted one end of the long red-brown mustache, and again thrown up as if he sought some recollection among the old rafters. These had the rich reserves of color characteristic of old wood, and the heavy beams of oak showed all their veinous possibilities in yellow and brown fibrous comminglements against the deep umber shadows of the high peak of the roof. The cobwebs adhering here and there had almost the consistency of a fabric, so densely woven they were. One pendulous gauze fragment moved suddenly without a breath of air, for a light living creature had run along the beam beneath it, and now stood looking down at the audience with a glittering eye and a half-spread bat-like wing,--a flying squirrel, whose nest was secreted in the king-post and entered from the outside. So still was the audience,--the grizzled, unkempt men, the sunbonneted women, even the giggling girls in the corner,--he might have been meditating a downward plunge into the room. Then slightly frowning, but smiling too, the juggler began to sing. It was a cultivated voice that rang out in the measures of “My Pretty Jane,”--a tenor of good range, true, clear, sweet, with a certain romantic quality that was in some sort compelling and effective. He sang well. Not that the performance would have been acceptable considered as that of a high-grade professional, yet it was far too good for a mere parlor amateur. The rich, vibrant voice, without accompaniment,--grotesque inadequacy to his mind,--filled the little building with a pathetic, penetrating sweetness, and the whole method of rendering the ballad was characterized by that elaborate simplicity and restrained precision so marked in professional circles, so different from the enthusiastic _abandon_ of the reckless home talent.