"'Alice,' roared a voice, and then, O like a lilied angel,
Leaning from the lighted door, a fair face unafraid,
Leaning over Red Rose Lane, O, leaning out of Paradise
Drooped the sudden glory of his green-gowned maid!"

Touching now a lighter note, his voice laughed through the lovely lines;
of the ship which was to sail beyond the world; of how each man staked
such small wealth as he possessed; "for in those days Marchaunt
adventurers shared with their prentices the happy chance of each new
venture."

But Whittington had nothing to give. "Not a groat," he tells sweet
Alice. "I staked my last groat in a cat!"

"'Ay, but we need a cat,'
The Captain said. So when the painted ship
Sailed through a golden sunrise down the Thames,
A gray tail waved upon the misty poop,
And Whittington had his venture on the seas!"

The ringing words brought tumultuous applause. Pittiwitz, startled, sat
up and blinked. People bent to each other, asking: "Who is this Roger
Poole?" Under his breath Barry was saying, boyishly, "Gee!" He might
still wonder about Mary's lodger, he would never again look down on him.
And Delilah Jeliffe sitting next to Barry murmured, "I've heard that
voice before--but where?"

Again the bells boomed as the story swept on to the fortune which came to
the prentice lad--the price paid for his cat in Barbary by a king whose
house was rich in gems but sorely plagued with rats and mice.

Then Whittington's offer of his wealth to Alice, her refusal, and so--to
the end.

"'I know a way,' said the Bell of St. Martin's.
'Tell it and be quick,' laughed the prentices below!
'Whittington shall marry her, marry her, marry her!
Peal for a wedding,' said the Big Bell of Bow."

Roger stopped there, and with Pittiwitz in his arms, rose to light his
candle. All about him people were saying things, but their words seemed
to come to him through a beating darkness. There was only one
face--Mary's, and she was leaning toward him, or was it above him? "It
was wonderful," she said.

"It is a great poem."

"I don't mean that--it was the way you--gave it."

Outwardly calm, he carried his candle and set it in its place.

Then he came back to Mary--Mary with the shining eyes. This was his
night! "You liked it, then?"

For a moment she did not speak, then she said again, "It was wonderful."

There were other people about them now, and Roger met them with the ease
of a man of the