eavily in a small leather bag which he carried in a
carefully buttoned hip-pocket in his trousers. There it gave him
comfort, as, the day after he had landed in New York, it chinked and
thumped against him as he walked. There was so much of it! In this
land of gold and generous appreciation of ability, it would be far
more than enough to carry him and the two girls who were now dependent
on him until he should find a well paid, but not too conspicuous,
situation. He was sure of this. It had been the gossip of the little
orchestra in London that musicians, in New York, if worthy, were
always in demand; that when they played they were paid vastly. Tales
often had been told of money literally thrown to players by delighted
members of appreciative audiences--money in great rolls of bank-notes,
heavy gold-pieces, bank checks. Nowhere in the world, not even in the
music loving Fatherland, a wandering trombonist who had visited the
states had solemnly assured him, were expert performers on any sort of
instrument so well paid and so well beloved as in the city of New
York.

"You, Kreutzer," this man had said (for when musicians lie the
cultivated and exotic fancy, essential to success in their profession,
makes them lie superbly) "could, past the shadow of a doubt, win a
real fortune in a season in New York."

"Much work is waiting, eh?" said Kreutzer, eagerly. He did not wish to
win a fortune, for that would mean the larger orchestras, but he
wondered if the smaller organizations paid proportionally well.

"For such as you," the man replied, maliciously--he was a
disappointed, vicious person--"there ever is demand from large and
small."

"Why, then, did you come back to England?" the flute-player inquired.

"I? Oh, I am not an artist--a real artist, as you are," was the
answer, flattering and vicious. The man had tried to get an
introduction to fair Anna and had been refused peremptorily, as all
had been refused. He planned to have revenge for it. "The man who
merely plays is not so vastly better off, there in the states, than
here; but to the _artist_--to the real artist, such as you--the states
will literally pay anything."

That the man who had found failure was not a real musician Kreutzer
knew. Too often had his trombone trespassed, with its brazen bray,
upon the time which the composer had allotted to the soft, delightful
flute, to leave the slightest doubt of its performer's rank
incompetence. That he had failed