quarter of Bay City.

Through the summer night shrilled the sound of cachinations painted to
the colors of mirth. A cheap piano rattled and thumped through an
open window. Men's and women's voices mingled in rising and falling
gradations of harshness. Lights streamed irregularly across the dark.

Thorpe became aware of a figure crouched in the door-way almost at his
feet. The sill lay in shadow so the bulk was lost, but the flickering
rays of a distant street lamp threw into relief the high-lights of a
violin, and a head. The face upturned to him was thin and white and
wolfish under a broad white brow. Dark eyes gleamed at him with the
expression of a fierce animal. Across the forehead ran a long but
shallow cut from which blood dripped. The creature clasped both arms
around a violin. He crouched there and stared up at Thorpe, who stared
down at him.

"What's the matter?" asked the latter finally.

The creature made no reply, but drew his arms closer about his
instrument, and blinked his wolf eyes.

Moved by some strange, half-tolerant whim of compassion, Thorpe made a
sign to the unknown to rise.

"Come with me," said he, "and I'll have your forehead attended to."

The wolf eyes gleamed into his with a sudden savage concentration. Then
their owner obediently arose.

Thorpe now saw that the body before him was of a cripple, short-legged,
hunch-backed, long-armed, pigeon-breasted. The large head sat strangely
top-heavy between even the broad shoulders. It confirmed the hopeless
but sullen despair that brooded on the white countenance.

At the hotel Thorpe, examining the cut, found it more serious in
appearance than in reality. With a few pieces of sticking plaster he
drew its edges together.

Then he attempted to interrogate his find.

"What is your name?" he asked.

"Phil."

"Phil what?"

Silence.

"How did you get hurt?"

No reply.

"Were you playing your fiddle in one of those houses?"

The cripple nodded slowly.

"Are you hungry?" asked Thorpe, with a sudden thoughtfulness.

"Yes," replied the cripple, with a lightning gleam in his wolf eyes.

Thorpe rang the bell. To the boy who answered it he said:

"Bring me half a dozen beef sandwiches and a glass of milk, and be quick
about it."

"Do you play the fiddle much?" continued Thorpe.

The cripple nodded again.

"Let's hear what you can do."

"They cut my strings!" cried Phil with a passionate wail.

The cry came from the heart, and