sounded
very distinctly. He could distinguish the sharp, staccato ring when a
cup was laid in a saucer, and the nervous rattle when cup and saucer
were passed from one hand to the other. Spoons struck china with a faint
metallic tinkle. He felt as if all the sounds were made at the back of
his neck, and the crash seemed to burst in his head.

Dan Murray creaked into the room. "Michael James," he whispered, "you
ought to take something. Have a bite to eat. Take a cup of tea. I'll
bring it in to you."

"Oh, let me alone, Daniel," he answered. He felt he would like to kick
him and curse him while doing so.

"You must take something." Murray's voice rose from a whisper to a low,
argumentative sing-song. "You know it's not natural. You've got to eat."

"No, thank you, Daniel," he answered. It was as if he were talking to a
boy who was good-natured but tiresome. "I don't feel like eating. Maybe
afterward I will."

"Michael James," Murray continued.

"Well, what is it, Daniel?"

"Don't you think I'd better go down and see young Kennedy and tell him
how foolish it would be of him to come up here and start fighting? You
know it isn't right. Hadn't I better go down? He's at home now."

"Let that alone, Daniel, I tell you." The thought of Murray breaking
into the matter that was between himself and the young man filled him
with a sense of injured delicacy.

"I know he's going to make trouble."

"Let me handle that, like a good fellow, and leave me by myself, Daniel,
if you don't mind."

"Ah well, sure. You know best." And Murray crept out of the room.

As the door opened Michael could hear some one singing in a subdued
voice and many feet tapping like drums in time with the music. They
had to pass the night outside, and it was the custom, but the singing
irritated him. He could fancy heads nodding and bodies swaying from
side to side with the rhythm. He recognized the tune, and it began to
run through his head, and he could not put it out of it. The lilt of
it captured him, and suddenly he began thinking of the wonderful brain
that musicians must have to compose music. And then his thoughts
switched to a picture he had seen of a man in a garret with a fiddle
beneath his chin.

He straightened himself up a little, for sitting crouched forward as
he was put a strain on his back, and he unconsciously sat upright to
ease himself. And as he sat up he caught a glimpse of the cotton gloves
on the bed, and it burst in on