with a glance at the hunchback, who scowled in return.

"'I shall die of this close street, and of all I have suffered,'
thought the thrush.

"'Green leaves! green leaves!' he sang, for it was the only song he
knew.

"'My voice is gone,' thought the hunchback's companion. 'He'll beat me
again to-night; but it can't last long:

"Love and truth,
And joys of youth"'--

she sang, for that was the song she had learned; and it was not her
fault that it was inappropriate.

"But the ballad-singer's captivity was nearly at an end. When the
hunchback left her that evening to spend the sailor's penny with the
few others which she had earned, he swore that when he came back he
would make her sing louder than she had done all day. Her face showed
no emotion, less than it did when he saw it hours after, when beauty
and feeling seemed to have returned to it in the peace of death, when
he came back and found the cage empty, and that the long-prisoned
spirit had flown away to seek the face of love and truth indeed.

"But how about the thrush?

"The sailor had scarcely swallowed the wrath which the hunchback had
stirred in him, when his ear was caught by the song of the thrush above