Thorpe was touched by it. The price of
strings was evidently a big sum.

"I'll get you more in the morning," said he. "Would you like to leave
Bay City?"

"Yes" cried the boy with passion.

"You would have to work. You would have to be chore-boy in a lumber
camp, and play fiddle for the men when they wanted you to."

"I'll do it," said the cripple.

"Are you sure you could? You will have to split all the wood for the
men, the cook, and the office; you will have to draw the water, and fill
the lamps, and keep the camps clean. You will be paid for it, but it
is quite a job. And you would have to do it well. If you did not do it
well, I would discharge you."

"I will do it!" repeated the cripple with a shade more earnestness.

"All right, then I'll take you," replied Thorpe.

The cripple said nothing, nor moved a muscle of his face, but the gleam
of the wolf faded to give place to the soft, affectionate glow seen in
the eyes of a setter dog. Thorpe was startled at the change.

A knock announced the sandwiches and milk. The cripple fell upon them
with both hands in a sudden ecstacy of hunger. When he had finished, he
looked again at Thorpe, and this time there were tears in his eyes.

A little later Thorpe interviewed the proprietor of the hotel.

"I wish you'd give this boy a good cheap room and charge his keep to
me," said he. "He's going north with me."

Phil was led away by the irreverent porter, hugging tightly his unstrung
violin to his bosom.

Thorpe lay awake for some time after retiring. Phil claimed a share of
his thoughts.

Thorpe's winter in the woods had impressed upon him that a good cook and
a fiddler will do more to keep men contented than high wages and easy
work. So his protection of the cripple was not entirely disinterested.
But his imagination persisted in occupying itself with the boy. What
terrible life of want and vicious associates had he led in this terrible
town? What treatment could have lit that wolf-gleam in his eyes? What
hell had he inhabited that he was so eager to get away? In an hour or so
he dozed. He dreamed that the cripple had grown to enormous proportions
and was overshadowing his life. A slight noise outside his bed-room door
brought him to his feet.

He opened the door and found that in the stillness of the night the poor
deformed creature had taken the blankets from his bed and had spread
them across the door-sill of the man who had befriended him.

Chapter