ield his features from the others--his
many auditors; but they didn't mind that brief interruption; it afforded
a moment for that rough and ready dialogue which a gathering of this
kind finds to its liking.

"Give him a trokee! Anybody got a cough drop?"

"It's soothing syrup he wants."

"No; it's us wants that."

"What the devil--" Mr. Mackintosh looked out of the wagon.

Mr. Heatherbloom suddenly laughed, a forced reckless laugh. "Guess it
was the dampness. I'm like some artists--have to be careful where I
sing."

"Have a tablet, feller, do!" said a man in the audience.

Horatio looked him in the eye. "Maybe it's you want something."

The facetious one began to back away; he had seen that look before, the
steely glint that goes before battle.

"The chord now, if you please!" said Mr. Heatherbloom to the composer
in a still quiet voice.

Mr. Mackintosh hit viciously; Mr. Heatherbloom sang again; he did more
than that. He outdid himself; he employed bombast,--some thought it
pathos. He threw a tremolo into his voice; it passed for emotion. He
"caught 'em", in Mr. Mackintosh's parlance, and "caught 'em hard". Some
more people bought copies. The alert Mr. Mackintosh managed to gather in
about a dollar, and saw, in consequence, great fortune "coming his way"
at last; the clouds had a golden lining.

"Say, you're the pard I've been a-looking for!" he jubilantly told Mr.
Heatherbloom as they prepared to move on. "We'll make a beautiful team.
Isn't it a peach?"

"What?"

"That song. It made them look like a rainy day. Git up!" And Mr.
Mackintosh prodded the bony ribs of their steed.

Mr. Heatherbloom absent-mindedly gazed in the direction the big shining
motor had vanished.

CHAPTER II

VARYING FORTUNES

Mr. Heatherbloom's new-found employment proved but ephemeral. The next
day the sheriff took possession of the music emporium and all it
contained, including the nomadic piano and the now empty jug. The
contents of the last the composer-publisher took care to put beyond
reach of his many creditors whom he, in consequence, faced with a
seemingly care-free, if artificial, jocularity. Mr. Heatherbloom walked
soberly forth from the shop of concord.

He had but turned the corner of the street when into the now dissonant
"hole in the wall", amid the scene of wreck and disaster, stepped a tall
dark man, with a closely cropped beard, who spoke English with an accent
and who regarded the erstwhile propr