rags, she passed out of the room with her dingy guitar, while the large
man who had accosted her so rudely shrank back, abashed, before the
glance with which the black eyes reproached him to the heart, ere they
vanished in the crowd.

Here was a chance for me. I happened to be the only reporter present at
the scene--'sensation' was my forte--a 'beat' upon all the other
dailies had come directly to my hand. It was late in the week, and I
was also afforded the chance of cooking the thing up remuneratively for
two or three weekly papers. But the whole thing stood before me like a
picture which it seemed a sacrilege to copy. So I cheated the _Tribune_
with the rest, and, for the first time in my life, let the opportunity
for a sensation slip my hand. No credit to either heart or head,
however, for a relapse into my chronic state of impecuniosity, on the
following week, caused me to curse a squeamishness whose absence might
have earned a score of dollars.

But I soon forgot the incidents in the court-room in the manifold and
hum-drum duties of my profession.

Several months afterward, however, I was passing down Park Row, when my
attention was attracted to a little girl playing a guitar and singing
an Italian song in a plaintive, monotonous air. Her dress and voice
attracted my attention on the instant, and, when I saw her face, I
recognized Angela, the girl of the trial-scene. It was her father whom,
at that very moment, I was going to see hanged. I stood stock-still
with amazement, the coincidence was so startling.

When she had finished her song, and had garnered up the few coppers
placed in her hand by the careless and uncritical crowd, I stepped up