“I am instructed by my client to hand you this check, and to inform you that there will be mailed, each week, to your mother, for an indefinite period hereafter, a check for ten dollars. I have no further instructions, except to preserve absolute secrecy.” The letter ended in due legal form. Jim, thereafter, did three things. The first was to go to the lawyer who had sent the letter and ask who had given the money. He got no answer. The second was to seek out old Eph and accuse him of sending it. At which Eph cackled joyfully. “Lawdy, suh,” the old darky chuckled guilelessly. “Where you think I gwine git ’leven hunnerd dollars. Don’ you joke an old man, boy.” The third thing Jim did, when he gave up hope of discovering the identity of his benefactor, was to enlist. V One of the charms of old Eph’s nightly performances at his chosen spot near the subway kiosk was that he never asked for money. The mercenary side of his activities was never prominent. It was his custom to remain, sitting cross-legged upon the paving, from beginning to end. He never rose to pass his hat or his palm solicitously among the listeners; and he never went so far as to set a tin cup or a similar receptacle invitingly beside him. If coins were tossed his way, he caught them with skinny fingers or inverted banjo; if none were tossed, no matter. Eph never complained. But about the time Jim Forrest enlisted, it was remarked that old Eph began to grow greedy. At first he interspersed among his songs little half-caught remarks about the exceeding hard times; the high cost of living, even for a dry old darky; and the necessity of eating which possesses every man. A little later, he introduced the custom of passing his battered old hat out through the crowd. He never carried it from man to man himself; he simply tossed it to the nearest, and then broke into a gay and chuckling melody to hide his own confusion while it went from hand to hand and came back to him. Eventually, he fell into the habit of leaving his hat, bottom side up, upon the paving between his feet; and he referred now and then, in his songs, to the necessity for putting coins into it. Some people who had known Eph for a good many years thought he was becoming miserly. They told stories, from man to man, about beggars of whom they had heard who owned half a dozen apartment houses out in Dorchester. And they quit coming to hear Eph sing. Others deplored the old man’s avarice, but gave. Still others decided that the high cost of living must have hit Eph hard, and offered to help him.