h listening to after that of the choirmaster. But he was wrong. A
few more notes from the organ, and then, as night-stillness in a wood is
broken by the nightingale, so upon the silence of the church a
boy-alto's voice broke forth in obedience to the choirmaster's uplifted
hand:

"_Then_, I said--I said----"

Jack gasped, but even as he strained his eyes to see what such a singer
could look like, with higher, clearer notes the soprano rose above him
--"Then I sa--a--id," and the duet began:

"Oh that I had wings--O that I had wings like a dove!"

_Soprano_.--"Then would I flee away." _Alto_.--"Then would I
flee away." _Together_.--"And be at rest--flee away and be at
rest."

The clear young voices soared and chased each other among the arches, as
if on the very pinions for which they prayed. Then--swept from their
seats by an upward sweep of the choirmaster's arms--the chorus rose, as
birds rise, and carried on the strain.

It was not a very fine composition, but this final chorus had the
singular charm of fugue. And as the voices mourned like doves, "Oh that
I had wings!" and pursued each other with the plaintive passage, "Then
would I flee away--then would I flee away----," Jack's ears knew no
weariness of the repetition. It was strangely like watching the rising
and falling of Daddy Darwin's pigeons, as they tossed themselves by
turns upon their homeward flight.

After the fashion of the piece and period, the chorus was repeated, and
the singers rose to supreme effort. The choirmaster's hands flashed
hither and thither, controlling, inspiring, directing. He sang among the
tenors.

Jack's voice nearly choked him with longing to sing too. Could words of
man go more deeply home to a young heart caged within workhouse walls?

"Oh that I had wings like a dove! Then would I flee away--" the
choirmaster's white hands were fluttering downwards in the dusk, and the
chorus sank with them--"flee away and be at rest!"

SCENE IV.

Jack March had a busy little brain, and his nature was not of the limp
type that sits down with a grief. That most memorable tea-party had
fired his soul with two distinct ambitions. First, to be a choir-boy;
and, secondly, to dwell in Daddy Darwin's Dovecot. He turned the matter
over in his mind, and patched together the following facts:

The Board of Guardians meant to apprentice him, Jack, to some master, at
the earliest opportunity. Daddy Darwin (so the old pauper told him) was