“Lot’s drunk,” one door-keeper whispered to another.

“No; the Devil’s in her, though, like a tiger, to-night.”

Yet there was a certain grace and beauty in her face, as she looked at the manager, and spoke low and sudden.

“I’m not a beggar.  I want money,—­honest money.  It’s Christmas eve.  They say you want a voice for the chorus, in the carols.  Put me where I’ll be hid, and I’ll sing for you.”

The manager’s hand fell from his watch-chain.  Storrs, a young lawyer of the place, touched his shoulder.

“Don’t look so aghast, Pumphrey.  Let her sing a ballad to show you.  Her voice is a real curiosity.”

Madame ——­ looked dubiously across the room:  her black maid had whispered to her.  Lot belonged to an order she had never met face to face before:  one that lives in the suburbs of hell.

“Let her sing, Pumphrey.”

“If”——­looking anxiously to the lady.

“Certainly,” drawled that type of purity.  “If it is so curious, her voice.”

“Sing, then,” nodding to the girl.

There was a strange fierceness under her dead, gray eye.

“Do you mean to employ me to-night?”

Her tones were low, soft, from her teeth out, as I told you.  Her soul was chained, below:  a young girl’s soul, hardly older than your little daughter’s there, who sings Sunday-school hymns for you in the evenings.  Yet one fancied, if this girl’s soul were let loose, it would utter a madder cry than any fiend in hell.

“Do you mean to employ me?” biting her finger-ends until they bled.

“Don’t be foolish, Charlotte,” whispered Storrs.  “You may be thankful you’re not sent to jail instead.  But sing for him.  He’ll give you something, may-be.”

She did not damn him, as he expected, stood quiet a moment, her eyelids fallen, relaxed with an inexpressible weariness.  A black porter came to throw coals into the stove:  he knew “dat debbil, Lot,” well:  had helped drag her drunk to the lock-up a day or two before.  Now, before the white folks, he drew his coat aside, loathing to touch her.  She followed him with a glazed look.

“Do you see what I am?” she said to the manager.

Nothing pitiful in her voice.  It was too late for that.

“He wouldn’t touch me:  I’m not fit.  I want help.  Give me some honest work.”

She stopped and put her hand on his coat-sleeve.  The child she might have been, and never was, looked from her face that moment.

“God made me, I think,” she said, humbly.

The manager’s thin face reddened.

“God bless my soul! what shall I do, Mr. Storrs?”

The young man’s thick lip and thicker eyelid drooped.  He laughed, and whispered a word or two.

“Yes,” gruffly, being reassured.  “There’s a policeman outside.  Joe, take her out, give her in charge to him.”

The negro motioned her before him with a billet of wood he held.  She laughed.  Her laugh had gained her the name of “Devil Lot.”