twenty-six.

He followed his masked guide across Canal Street and into the foreign quarter of the city, where the surroundings were unfamiliar to him. He gazed with mild repugnance at the squalid old houses, moldering behind their rusted iron balconies. Dim, flag-paved hallways allowed him a glimpse of flowered courtyards at the rear; cool passages went twisting in between the buildings. Over hard-baked, glaring walls there drooped branches laden with bloom and fruit. The streets were narrow, the houses leaned intimately toward one another, as if exchanging gossip; little cafés with sanded floors opened upon the sidewalks. Here the carnival crowd was more foreign in character; people were dancing to orchestras of guitar and mandolin; youths turned somersaults for pennies; ragged negroes jigged and shuffled with outstretched hats.

Through this confusion the Norman girl took her way, now seeking some deep doorway to allow a particularly boisterous group to pass, now flitting through the open spaces with the swift irregularity of a butterfly winging its course through sunlit stretches. But her caution, her birdlike, backward glances, told Van Dam that she was in constant dread of discovery, and involuntarily he lessened the distance between them.

It was well, perhaps, that he did so, for just then a man in a domino like his own accosted the girl. Roly saw his guide shrink away, saw her turn and signal him with a swift, imperious gesture of warning. Instead of heeding it, he moved forward in time to intercept the stranger. The fellow was laughing loudly; he assumed a tipsy air and lurched against the girl; then, with a quickness that belied his pose, he snatched at her mask and bared her features. She cried out in terror, and with the sound of her voice Mr. Van Dam flew to action. He knew that until six o'clock disguises were inviolate, and that it was against the strictest of police regulations to unmask a reveler; therefore he yielded to a righteous impulse and struck the man in the domino squarely upon the jaw. Beneath Roly's rounded proportions was a deceptive machinery of bone and muscle that had been schooled by the most expensive instructors of boxing. He had known how to hit cleanly since he was twelve years old, and although he had never struck a man in anger until this moment, his fist went true. The fellow rocked stiffly back upon his heels and fell like a wooden figure, his head thumping dully on the pavement, and Roly gave vent to a most ungentlemanly snort of surprise and satisfaction. It had been much easier than he had expected, and feeling that the man should have every opportunity for fair play Roly 

 Prev. P 8/201 next