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“Now look at dat!” cried Mrs. Morton dolefully. “Look at dat! Ain’t dat de doggonest luck in de wide worl’! De gyahd he say dat Dago willin’ pay fifty cents a day fo’ me to teck an’ bring a message eve’y mawn’ tell de quahumteem took off de cellar. Now dat Dutch gal gone an’ loss dat money fo’ me–movin’ ‘way whuh nobody cain’t fine ‘er!”

“Sho!” laughed the widow. “Ef I’se in you place, Miz Mo’ton, an’ you’s in mine, dat money sho’lly, sho’lly nevah would be los’, indeed hit wouldn’t. I dass go in t’ de do’ an’ tu’n right ‘roun’ back ag’in an’ go down to dat gyahd an’ say de Dutch gal ‘ceive de message wid de bes’ er ‘bligin’ politeness an’ sent her kine regyahds to de Dago man an’ all inquirin’ frien’s, an’ hope de Dago man soon come an’ git ‘er. To-morrer de same, nex’ day de same–“

“Lawd, ef dat ain’t de beatenest!” cried Mrs. Morton delightedly. “Well, honey, I thank you long as I live, ’cause I nevah’d a wuk dat out by myself an de livin’ worl’, an’ I sho does needs de money. I’m goin’ do exackly dass de way you say. Dat man he ain’ goin’ know no diffunce till he git out–an’ den, honey,” she let loose upon the quiet air a sudden, great salvo of laughter, “dass let him fine Lize Mo’ton!”

Bertha went to live in the tiny room with the canary bird and the engraving of the “Rock of Ages.” This was putting lime to the canker, but, somehow, she felt that she could go to no other place. She told the landlady that her young man had not done so well in business as they had expected, and had sought work in another city. He would come back, she said.

She woke from troubled dreams each morning to stifle her sobbing in the pillow. “Ach, Toby, coultn’t you sented me yoost one word, you might sented me yoost one word, yoost one, to tell me what has happened mit you! Ach, Toby, Toby!”

The canary sang happily; she loved it and tended it, and the gay little prisoner tried to reward her by the most marvellous trilling in his power, but her heart was the sorer for every song.

After a time she went back drearily to the kraut-smelling restaurant, to the work she had thought to leave forever, that day when Toby had not come for her. She went out twenty times every morning, and oftener as it wore on towards evening, to look at his closed stand, always with a choking hope in her heart, always to drag leaden feet back into the restaurant. Several times, her breath failing for shame, she approached Italians in the street, or where there was one to be found at a stand of any sort she stopped and made a purchase, and asked for some word of Toby–without result, always. She knew no other way to seek for him.

One day, as she trudged homeward, two coloured women met on the pavement in front of her, exchanged greetings, and continued for a little way together.

“How you enjoyin’ you’ money, dese fine days, Miz Mo’ton?” inquired one, with a laugh that attested to the richness of the joke between the two.

“Law, honey,” answered the other, “dat good luck di’n’ las’ ve’y long. Dey done shut off my supplies.”

“No!”

“Yas’m, dey sho did. Dat man done tuck de smallpox; all on ’em ketched it, ev’y las’ one, off’n dat no ‘count Joe Cribbins, an’ now dat dey got de new pes’-house finish’, dey haul ’em off yon’eh, yas’day. Reckon dat ain’ make no diffunce in my urrant runnin’. Dat Dago man, he outer he hade two day fo’ dey haul ’em away, an’ ain’ sen’ no mo’ messages. So dat spile my job! Hit dass my luck. Dey’s sho’ a voodoo on Lize Mo’ton!”

Bertha, catching but fragments of this conversation, had no realization that it bore in any way upon the mystery of Toby; and she stumbled homeward through the twilight with her tired eyes on the ground.

When she opened the door of the tiny room, the landlady’s lean black cat ran out surreptitiously. The bird-cage lay on the floor, upside down, and of its jovial little inhabitant the tokens were a few yellow feathers.

Bertha did not know until a month after, when Leo Vesschi found her at the restaurant and told her, that out in the new pest-house, that other songster and prisoner, the gay little chestnut vender, Pietro Tobigli, had called lamentably upon the name of his God and upon “Libra Ogostine,” and now lay still forever, with the corduroy waistcoat and its precious burden tightly clenched to his breast. Even in his delirium they had been unable to coax or force him to part from it for a second.