'I shall not sing to-day, sir!' said the little girl, decisively; and then, with a dignity of grief which sat well upon her, despite her rags, she passed out of the room with her dingy guitar, while the large man who had accosted her so rudely shrank back, abashed, before the glance with which the black eyes reproached him to the heart, ere they vanished in the crowd. Here was a chance for me. I happened to be the only reporter present at the scene--'sensation' was my forte--a 'beat' upon all the other dailies had come directly to my hand. It was late in the week, and I was also afforded the chance of cooking the thing up remuneratively for two or three weekly papers. But the whole thing stood before me like a picture which it seemed a sacrilege to copy. So I cheated the _Tribune_ with the rest, and, for the first time in my life, let the opportunity for a sensation slip my hand. No credit to either heart or head, however, for a relapse into my chronic state of impecuniosity, on the following week, caused me to curse a squeamishness whose absence might have earned a score of dollars. But I soon forgot the incidents in the court-room in the manifold and hum-drum duties of my profession. Several months afterward, however, I was passing down Park Row, when my attention was attracted to a little girl playing a guitar and singing an Italian song in a plaintive, monotonous air. Her dress and voice attracted my attention on the instant, and, when I saw her face, I recognized Angela, the girl of the trial-scene. It was her father whom, at that very moment, I was going to see hanged. I stood stock-still with amazement, the coincidence was so startling. When she had finished her song, and had garnered up the few coppers placed in her hand by the careless and uncritical crowd, I stepped up to her and said: 'Angela, do you remember me?' 'Yes, sir,' she replied, her dark face lighting up with a gleam of recognition. 'Do you know what day this is?' 'It is the morning of my father's death--how should I forget it?' 'You refused to sing on the day of his sentence--can you find heart, then, to do so in this dreadful hour?' The dirty little fingers fluttered nervously over the music-strings--as the creative hand might do with a human heart of whose destiny there was a doubt. For an instant a pang of agony wreathed the young face to the depth of its expressions, but she resumed her sorrowful complacency immediately. 'I am singing to my mother across the sea,' she said, quietly.