ng profiles with his toes in black
paper!

"Have you been all the while helping the World, and is this all the pay
you get?" said the girl, his poor friend, who remembered what he had
done for her, when she was in her worst need.

"Yes," said Tiny; but there was no truth in what he said. He did not
intend to speak falsely, however,--which proves the sad pass he had
arrived at; he did not even know when he was deceiving himself! And
when Tiny said, that "yes," what do you suppose he thought of? Not of
all the precious time that he had wasted--not of the Pilgrim's Harp--not
of the promises he had made his father--nor of the great hope of the
poor which he had no cruelly disappointed--but only of the evil fortune
which had fallen on himself! This beggar girl to wait on him, instead
of the most beautiful lady in the world for a crown bearer! This garret
for a home, instead of a place at the king's table. And more fiercely
than ever raged that sickness called Despair.

But at length his strength began to return to him a little, and then for
the first time poor Tiny discovered that he was blind. And all the days
and weeks that came and went were like one long, dark night. In those
dreadful days our singer had nothing to do but to think, and the little
beggar girl had nothing to do but to beg; for Tiny's charity and
goodness of heart seemed to have all forsaken him, and one day in his
anger he drove her out of his garret, and bade her return no more, for
that the very thought of her was hateful to him. In doing this, Tiny
brought a terrible calamity upon himself; he fell against his harp and
broke it.

After that, while he sat pondering on the sad plight he was in, hungry
and cold and blind, he suddenly started up. A new thought had come to
him. "I will go home to my father's house," he said. "There is no
other way for me. Oh, my mother!" and bitterly he wept as he pronounced
that name, and thought how little like her tender and serene love was
the love of the best of all the friends he had found in that great city
of the world.

As he started up so quickly in a sort of frenzy, his foot struck against
the broken harp, and instantly the instrument gave forth a wailing
sound, that pierced the poet's heart. He lifted up the harp: alas! it
was _so_ broken he could do nothing with it; from his hands it fell back
upon the floor where it had lain neglected, forgotten, so long. But
Tiny's heart was now fairly awak