pealingly at the silent audience; but no word came
from his dry lips. He swallowed convulsively, and appeared to be
struggling with himself. A titter of laughter sounded from the back of
the room. The old man's face became fiery red and then deathly pale.
He looked helplessly and pitifully from side to side.

"Wind him up!" shouted a voice.

"He's stopped short, never to go again," called another.

"He's an old fraud, and his show's a fake!"

"Speech! speech!"

"No; a song! Let old dot-and-carry-one give us a song!"

"Oh, shut up! Don't you see he's a ballet-dancer?"

And so the derisive jeerings of this audience, like those of another
twenty years before, hailed Cap'n Cod's second failure. His confidence
in himself, his years of experience, the memory of what he ought to
say, all vanished the moment he faced that mass of upturned faces, and
he was once more the dumb, trembling Codringhampton of twenty years
before. A mist swam before his eyes, he groped blindly with his hands,
the derisive yells of the river-men, who were endeavoring to secure
their money's worth of amusement from this pitiful spectacle, grew
fainter and fainter in his ears. He tottered backward, and would have
fallen, had not a young man from the audience sprang to his assistance.

Very tenderly he helped the old man from the stage and into the
friendly shadows of the side scenes. In another moment he reappeared.
With flashing eyes he stepped in front of the turbulent audience and
held up his hand. The curiosity of the river-men was sufficient to
produce an almost instant silence, which in another second might have
changed into an angry roar.

Who was this young fellow? What business had he to interfere with
their fun? What was he going to say? He'd better be careful! They
were not in a humor to be trifled with.

For a moment he looked steadily at them.

Then he said:

"Boys, I am surprised, and if I thought for a moment that you really
meant to worry that old man, I should be ashamed of you. But I know
you didn't. It was only your fun. He has been a soldier, and lost a
leg fighting for you and me and to preserve the glorious Union, that
you and I are prouder of than anything else in life. He has a daughter
in there too--a young girl, for whom he is trying to make a living with
this show. I saw her just now, and if you could have seen the look of
distress and terror on her face as she sprang to the old man's side you