oney
that coal would cost; besides it was very expensive. So he preferred
to write in bed rather than spend money for fuel, until one day some
sixty odd pages of music were returned to him, because they were so
badly written as to be almost illegible. The fact is, the old man's
hands trembled so with the cold that he could not hold his pen tightly.
After this loss he gave up copying music, and so even this last meagre
means of getting money was denied him.

As he walked up and down his room, feeling intuitively that it was
breakfast time, he became really angry with himself for his repeated
failures. Lately he had been thinking of his wife and child; but
fourteen years had somewhat benumbed his memory. When he thought of
the happiness of his life with them, it was more as a happy dream that
he delighted to ponder over than a tangible something of which he had
been robbed. The wound was there but the pain had ceased.

"Are you coming out to breakfast?" said Pinac's voice outside.

"Come on, Anton," shouted Fico, "it's late!"

"I've had my breakfast," said Von Barwig, and he felt that he was lying
in a good cause. The men would have torn down the door and carried him
over to the restaurant by main force had they guessed the truth.
"Thank God it hasn't come to that," he thought.

"He is an early bird," commented Pinac, and he went out humming the
latest music-hall ditty which he was playing nightly to the patrons of
the _cafe_. Poons went along; he had no more idea of his benefactor's
condition than the man in the moon. The three men had not seen much of
him lately, for they always left him to himself when he signified by
his silence that he wanted to be alone. They respected his dignity,
his slightest suggestion was law to them; they loved him, so they left
him alone.

"Come on, you wretch," said Von Barwig to his violin, after the men had
gone, "you are the last of the Mohicans!" and, polishing it, he put it
in its case, having determined to sell it.

"This will be the first meal with which you have provided me," he said,
shaking his fist at it, "so at last you are going to accomplish
something, you cheap wooden cigar-box of a fiddle! I cannot play you
to advantage but I can eat you. That's all you are good for--a few
dinners and breakfasts!" He went out into the street with the violin
under his cloak, and from Houston Street he turned into the Bowery.
There was no elevated road at that time and the t