."

Adelbert, dozing between tickets, was liable to be roused by a vigorous
shaking, to a pair of anxious eyes gazing at him, and to a draft of
chill spring air from the open door.

"I but dozed," he would explain, without anger. "All my life have I
breathed the fumes and nothing untoward has happened."

Outwardly he was peaceful. The daughter now received his pension in
full, and wrote comforting letters. But his resentment and bitterness at
the loss of his position at the Opera continued, even grew.

For while he had now even a greater wage, and could eat three meals,
besides second breakfast and afternoon coffee, down deep in his heart
old Adelbert felt that he had lost caste. The Opera--that was a setting!
Great staircases of marble, velvet hangings, the hush before the
overture, and over all the magic and dignity of music. And before his
stall had passed and repassed the world--royalties, the aristocracy,
the army. Hoi polloi had used another entrance by which to climb to the
upper galleries. He had been, then, of the elect. Aristocrats who had
forgotten their own opera-glasses had requested him to give them of his
best, had through long years learned to know him there, and had nodded
to him as they swept by. The flash of jewels on beautiful necks, the
glittering of decorations on uniformed chests, had been his life.

And now, to what had he fallen! To selling tickets for an American
catch-penny scheme, patronized by butchers, by housemaids, by the common
people a noisy, uproarious crowd, that nevertheless counted their change
with suspicious eyes, and brought lunches in paper boxes, which they
scattered about.

"Riff-raff!" he said to himself scornfully.

There was, however, a consolation. He had ordered a new uniform. Not for
twenty years had he ventured the extravagance, and even now his cautious
soul quailed at the price. For the last half-dozen years he had stumped
through the streets, painfully aware of shabbiness, of a shiny back, of
patches, when, on the anniversary of the great battle to which he had
sacrificed a leg, the veterans marched between lines of cheering people.

Now, on this approaching anniversary, he could go peacefully, nay, even
proudly. The uniform was of the best cloth, and on its second fitting
showed already its marvel of tailoring. The news of it had gone around
the neighborhood. The tailor reported visits from those who would feel
of the cloth, and figure its expensiveness. In