er. This belief was strengthened
when the girl who performed the Spanish dance bestowed her affections
upon him. He was very happy and very vain, and for the first time he
forgot the people down in a little old Virginia cabin. In fact, he had
other uses for his money.

For the rest of the season, either on the road or in and about New
York, he sang steadily. Most of the things for which he had longed and
had striven had come to him. He was known as a rounder, his highest
ambition. His waistcoats were the loudest to be had. He was possessed
of a factitious ease and self-possession that was almost aggression.
The hot breath of the city had touched and scorched him, and had dried
up within him whatever was good and fresh. The pity of it was that he
was proud of himself, and utterly unconscious of his own degradation.
He looked upon himself as a man of the world, a fine product of the
large opportunities of a great city.

Once in those days he heard of Smith, his old-time companion at the
Springs. He was teaching at some small place in the South. Silas
laughed contemptuously when he heard how his old friend was employed.
"Poor fellow," he said, "what a pity he didn't come up here, and make
something out of himself, instead of starving down there on little or
nothing," and he mused on how much better his fate had been.

The season ended. After a brief period of rest, the rehearsals for
Frye's opera were begun. Silas confessed to himself that he was tired;
he had a cough, too, but Mr. Frye was still enthusiastic, and this was
to be the great triumph, both for the composer and the tenor.

"Why, I tell you, man," said Frye, "it's going to be the greatest
success of the year. I am the only man who has ever put grand-opera
effects into comic opera with success. Just listen to the chords of
this opening chorus." And so he inspired the singer with some of his
own spirit. They went to work with a will. Silas might have been
reluctant as he felt the strain upon him grow, but that he had spent
all his money, and Frye, as he expressed it, was "putting up for him,"
until the opening of the season.

Then one day he was taken sick, and although Frye fumed, the
rehearsals had to go on without him. For awhile his companions came to
see him, and then they gradually ceased to come. So he lay for two
months. Even Sadie, his dancing sweetheart, seemed to have forgotten
him. One day he sent for her, but the messenger returned to say she
co