themselves on the very door-step; and one squatting on the threshold. Meanwhile, the locust kept singing in the great old Pyncheon Elm.

“I don’t hear anybody in the house,” said one of the children to another. “The monkey won’t pick up anything here.”

“There is somebody at home,” affirmed the urchin on the threshold. “I heard a step!”

Still the young Italian’s eye turned sidelong upward; and it really seemed as if the touch of genuine, though slight and almost playful, emotion communicated a juicier sweetness to the dry, mechanical process of his minstrelsy. These wanderers are readily responsive to any natural kindness — be it no more than a smile, or a word itself not understood, but only a warmth in it —