re in his pockets, where he could feel one
shilling and a penny, all the spare cash that remained to him after a
friendly stroll through the town. When he saw the street singer, he
stopped, pulled off his hat, and scratched his head, as was his custom
when he was puzzled or interested.

"'It's no good keeping an odd penny,' he said to himself; 'poor thing,
she looks bad enough!' And, bringing the penny to the surface out of
the depths of his pocket, he gave it to the woman. The hunchback came
forward to take it, but the sailor passed him with a shove of his
elbow, and gave it to the singer, who handed it over to her companion
without moving a feature, and went on with her song.

"'I'd like to break every bone in your ugly body,' muttered the sailor,
with a glance at the hunchback, who scowled in return.

"'I shall die of this close street, and of all I have suffered,'
thought the thrush.

"'Green leaves! green leaves!' he sang, for it was the only song he
knew.

"'My voice is gone,' thought the hunchback's companion. 'He'll beat me
again to-night; but it can't last long:

"Love and truth,
And joys of youth"'--

she sang, for that was the song she had learned; and it was not her
fault that it was inappropriate.

"But the ballad-singer's captivity was nearly at an end. When the
hunchback left her that evening to spend the sailor's penny with the
few others which she had earned, he swore that when he came back he
would make her sing louder than she had done all day. Her face showed
no emotion, less than it did when he saw it hours after, when beauty
and feeling seemed to have returned to it in the peace of death, when
he came back and found the cage empty, and that the long-prisoned
spirit had flown away to seek the face of love and truth indeed.

"But how about the thrush?

"The sailor had scarcely swallowed the wrath which the hunchback had
stirred in him, when his ear was caught by the song of the thrush above
him.

"'You sing uncommon well, pretty one,' he said, stopping and putting
his hat even farther back than usual to look up. He was one of those
good people who stop a dozen times in one street, and look at
everything as they go along; whereby you may see three times as much of
life as other folk, but it is a terrible temptation to spend money. It
was so in this instance. The sailor looked till his kindly eye
perceived that the bird was ill-cared for.

"'It should have a bit of sod, it _s