The Lady Doc. Caroline Lockhart

of snarling dogs fighting in the deep, white dust of the street.

      She glanced through the window and saw without seeing, the deputy-sheriff escorting an unsteady prisoner down the street followed by a boisterous crowd. In a way she was dimly conscious that there was something familiar in the prisoner's appearance, but the impression was not strong enough to rouse her from her preoccupation, and she turned to walk the floor without being cognizant of the fact that she was walking.

      She suddenly threw both hands aloft.

      "I've got it!" she cried exultingly. "The very thing to counteract her story. It'll work—it always does—and I know that I can do it!"

      In her relief she laughed, a queer, cackling laugh which came strangely from the lips of a woman barely thirty. The laughter was still on her lips when a sound reached her ears which killed it as quickly as it came.

      Addio mia bella Napoli, addio, addio!

       La tua soave imagine chi mai, chi mai scordar potra!

       Del ciel l'auzzurro fulgido, la placida marina,

       Qual core non imebria, non bea non bea divolutta!

       In tela terra el 'aura favellano d'amore;

       Te sola al mio dolore conforto io sognero

       Oh! addio mia bella Napoli, addio, addio!

       Addio care memorie del tempo ah! che fuggi!

      The voice rang out like a golden bell, vibrating, as sweetly penetrating. The strange words fell like the notes of the meadow lark in spring, easy, liquid, yet with the sureness of knowledge.

      The incoherent argument beneath the window ceased, the piano and the phonograph were silenced, the wailing urchin dried its tears and all the raw little town of Crowheart seemed to hold its breath as the wonderful tenor voice rose and fell on the soft June night.

      Adieu, my own dear Napoli! Adieu to thee, Adieu to thee!

       Thy wondrous pictures in the sea, will ever fill my memory!

       Thy skies of deepest, brightest blue, thy placid waves so soft and clear;

       With heaving sigh and bitter tear, I bid a last, a sad adieu!

       Adieu the fragrant orange grove, the scented air that breathes of love

       Shall charm my heart with one bright ray, in dreams, wher'er I stray;

       Oh, adieu, my own dear Napoli! Adieu to thee, Adieu to thee!

       Adieu each soul-felt memory, of happy days long passed away!

      The old street-song of Italy, the song of its people, never held a stranger audience in thraldom. If the song had been without words the result would have been the same, almost, for it was the voice which reached through liquor befuddled brains to find and stir remote and hidden recesses in natures long since hardened to sentiment. Rough speeches, ribald words and oaths died on the lips of those who crowded the doorway of saloons, and they stood spell-bound by the song which was sung as they felt dimly the angels must sing up there in that shadowy land back of the stars in which vaguely they believed.

      Only those who have lived in isolated places can understand what music means to those who year after year are without it. Any sound that is not an actual discord becomes music then and the least gentle listen with pathetic eagerness. A worn phonograph screeching the popular songs of a past decade holds the rapt attention of such. It reminds them of that world they left long ago, a world which in the perspective of waning years looks all song and laughter, good company, good clothes, good food, and green things everywhere.

      Therefore it is little wonder that this voice of marvellous sweetness and power rising unexpectedly out of the moonlit night should lay an awed hush upon the music-starved town. To some it brought a flood of memories and lumps in aching throats while many a weather-beaten face was lifted from mediocrity by a momentary exultation that was of the soul.

      That a human voice unaided by a visible personality could throw such a spell upon the listeners seems rather a tax upon credulity; but the singer himself appeared to have no misgivings. His face wore a look of smiling, mocking confidence as he stood with one hand on his hip, the other grasping a bar of the iron grating which covered the single window of Crowheart's calaboose, pouring forth the golden notes with an occasional imperious toss of his head and a flash of his black eyes which made him look like a royal prisoner.

      When the last note had died away, Dr. Harpe breathed an ejaculation.

      "The Dago Duke!"

      "He sings like an angel," said "Slivers," a barkeep.

      "And fights like a devil," replied Dan Treu, the deputy-sheriff. "He turned a knife in Tinhorn's shoulder."