re than there is in him. There's no
divine melody in _me_. Good spirits now and then, a bit of sentiment now
and then, a dash more or less of the devil now and then--that's all I'm
equal to. If I could have written that gavotte you played a minute ago,
I could knock sparks out of people with it. Here! lend me the fiddle.'

He played it through with the grave-faced merriment proper to it, and
here and there with such a frolicking forth of sudden laughter and
innocent fun as gave gravity the lie and made the pretence of it dearly
droll.

'That's it,' he said, looking up with naive triumph when he had
finished.

Yes, that was it, Christopher confessed, as he took back the violin and
bow and laid them on the table.

'What brings a man who plays as you do, playing in the streets?' he
asked a little sulkily.

'That eternal want of pence which vexes fiddlers,' said the youngster 'I
lost an engagement a month ago. First violin at the Garrick. Rowed with
the manager. Nothing else turned up. Must make money somehow.'

'What have you made to-night?' Christopher asked. 'I beg your pardon,'
he said a second later; 'that is no business of mine, of course.'

'About seven or eight shillings,' said the other, disregarding the
withdrawal of the question. 'And I won't ask you,' he went on, 'what
brings a man who writes like you living near the clouds in a street like
this?'

'Are you an Englishman?' asked Christopher.

'No,' said the other. 'No fiddler ever was. I beg your pardon. I
oughtn't to have said that, even though I think it. No. I am a Bohemian,
blood and bones, but I came to England when I was eight years old, and I
have lived in London ever since.'

They went on talking together, and laid the foundations of a friendship
which afterwards built itself up steadily. In two months' time
Carl Rubach was restored to his old place at the Garrick, and poor
Christopher was beginning to find out in real earnest what it was to be
hungry. He was too proud to ask anybody for a loan, and Rubach was the
only man he really knew. 'When things are at their worst,' says
the cynical bard, 'they sometimes mend.' Things suddenly mended for
Christopher. The Bohemian turned up one afternoon with an Englishman in
his train, a handsome young fellow of perhaps five-and-twenty, with a
light curling beard and a blonde moustache.

'Allow me to introduce to you Mr. John Holt,' said the Bohemian. 'This,
Mr. Holt, is Mr. Christopher Stretton, a mu