The great city frightened him at first, but he found there some, like himself, drawn from the smaller towns of the South.  Others in the company were the relics of the old days of negro minstrelsy, and still others recruited from the church choirs in the large cities.  Silas was an adaptable fellow, but it seemed a little hard to fall in with the ways of his new associates.  Most of them seemed as far away from him in their knowledge of worldly things as had the waiters at the Springs a few years before.  He was half afraid of the chorus girls, because they seemed such different beings from the nurse girls down home.  However, there was little time for moping or regrets.  Mr. Frye was, it must be said, an indefatigable worker.  They were rehearsing every day.  Silas felt himself learning to sing.  Meanwhile, he knew that he was learning other things—­a few more elegancies and vices.  He looked upon the “rounders” with admiration and determined to be one.  So, after rehearsals were over other occupations held him.  He came to be known at the clubs and was quite proud of it, and he grew bolder with the chorus girls, because he was to be a star.

After three weeks of training, the company opened, and Silas, who had never sung anything heavier than “Bright Sparkles in the Churchyard,” was dressed in a Fauntleroy suit, and put on to sing in a scene from “Rigoletto.”

Every night he was applauded to the echo by “the unskilful,” until he came to believe himself a great singer.  This belief was strengthened when the girl who performed the Spanish dance bestowed her affections upon him.  He was very happy and very vain, and for the first time he forgot the people down in a little old Virginia cabin.  In fact, he had other uses for his money.

For the rest of the season, either on the road or in and about New York, he sang steadily.  Most of the things for which he had longed and had striven had come to him.  He was known as a rounder, his highest ambition.  His waistcoats were the loudest to be had.  He was possessed of a factitious ease and self-possession that was almost aggression.  The hot breath of the city had touched and scorched him, and had dried up within him whatever was good and fresh.  The pity of it was that he was proud of himself, and utterly unconscious of his own degradation.  He looked upon himself as a man of the world, a fine product of the large opportunities of a great city.

Once in those days he heard of Smith, his old-time companion at the Springs.  He was teaching at some small place in the South.  Silas laughed contemptuously when he heard how his old friend was employed.  “Poor fellow,” he said, “what a pity he didn’t come up here, and make something out of himself, instead of starving down there on little or nothing,” and he mused on how much better his fate had been.

The season ended.  After a brief period of rest, the rehearsals for Frye’s opera were begun.  Silas confessed to himself that he was tired; he had a cough, too, but Mr. Frye was still enthusiastic, and this was to be the great triumph, both for the composer and the tenor.