“Well,” said the boy, “I may be a rogue and a vagabond.  Indeed, I think that I probably am; but I would claim the license that has always been allowed to singers.”

“Oh!” said the magistrate.  “So you are one of those, are you!  And what is your message!”

“I think if I could sing you a song or two I could explain myself better,” said the boy.

“Well,” replied the magistrate doubtfully, “you can try if you like, but I warn you that I wrote songs myself when I was a boy, so that I know something about it.”

“Oh, I’m glad of that,” said the boy, and he sang his famous song of the grass that is so green, and when he had finished the magistrate frowned.

“I knew that before,” he said.

So then the boy sang his wonderful song of the sky that is so blue.  And when he had finished the magistrate scowled.  “And what are we to learn from that!” he said.

So then the boy lost his temper and sang some naughty doggerel he had made up in his cell that morning.  He abused the town and townsmen, but especially the townsmen.  He damned their morals, their customs, and their institutions.  He said that they had ugly faces, raucous voices, and that their bodies were unclean.  He said they were thieves and liars and murderers, that they had no ear for music and no sense of humour.  Oh, he was bitter!

“Good God!” said the magistrate, “that’s what I call real improving poetry.  Why didn’t you sing that first?  There might have been a miscarriage of justice.”

Then the baker, the tailor, the butcher, the cobbler, the milkman, and the maker of candlesticks rose in court and said—­

“Ah, but we all knew there was something in him.”

So the magistrate gave the boy a certificate that showed that he was a real singer, and the tradesmen gave him a purse of gold, but the tailor’s little daughter gave him one of her golden ringlets.  “You won’t forget, boy, will you?” she said.

“Oh, no,” said the boy; “but I wish you had liked my songs.”

Presently, when he had come a little way out of the town, he put his hand in his wallet and drew out the magistrate’s certificate and tore it in two; and then he took out the gold pieces and threw them into the ditch, and they were not half as bright as the buttercups.  But when he came to the ringlet he smiled at it and put it back.

“Yet she was as bad as the rest of them,” he thought with a sigh.

And he went across the world with his songs.

And Who Shall Say——?

It was a dull November day, and the windows were heavily curtained, so that the room was very dark.  In front of the fire was a large arm-chair, which shut whatever light there might be from the two children, a boy of eleven and a girl about two years younger, who sat on the floor at the back of the room.  The boy was the better looking, but the girl had the better face.  They were both gazing at the arm-chair with the utmost excitement.