was that of Robert Adams, the book Priscilla's "Common Prayer." Like a flash the old lines came back in his forehead; he went to the case and opening the glass doors, carefully took down a small, silver sheath, the work of some artist of Goa, wherein the influence of both India and Europe showed in the execution. The pressure of a button pushed out a grooved dagger which fitted so low in the sheath as to show only the head of its jeweled hilt. Dom Pedro removed the dagger, wrapped it in his handkerchief and then putting it in his breast pocket replaced the empty sheath in its old position.

III.

The government of Macao derives its greatest revenue from the licensing of gambling houses, and these form one of the principal attractions in the city[Pg 19] to the European from Hong Kong as well as the native Portuguese and Chinese. Whatever fault the visitor finds, on moral grounds, with these houses he must admit the fact that they are quiet and orderly, while the picturesqueness of the life within them and that peculiar glamour which varnishes all that pertains to a great gambling hall where fortune shows herself directly face to face with us, has a charm which hides the immorality from even the most straight-laced Puritan.

[Pg 19]

One of these houses was the favourite and nightly resort of Dom Pedro, where he played high or low according to the state of his finances at the moment. Dom Amaral, though himself a devotee of the fan-tan table, observed with fear this controlling passion of his son which he believed would some day destroy the comfortable fortune he had amassed with so many years of labour.

Adams would have certainly preferred to spend the whole evening in the family circle, but Dom Pedro urged him with so much, and such unusual kindness to accompany him to the gambling house that he consented, and at about eleven o'clock the two young men left the Praya and walked into the town beneath the soft lights of the oil lamps. The streets were deserted as usual, here and there a policeman, hooded like a pilgrim, sauntered leisurely along, or[Pg 20] the Chinese watchman with drum and clapper woke the echoes of the lonely ways warning thieves of his approach.

[Pg 20]

The only illuminated houses were fan-tan houses and these presently became numerous; now and then music was heard but not of a very seductive kind. Into one of the largest and most gaily decorated houses, Dom Pedro and Robert Adams went, climbing to the second floor by stairs bordered with shrubs 

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