for, indeed, almost benevolent ones, for the mules would have been capable of obtaining with their teeth what their guardian had obtained by mere weight of his body. But Aylmer felt that by accepted social standards a kick would not have been more than his due. Had he not been behaving like some cub of a cockney clerk at an Earl's Court Exhibition? His lips moved. He was muttering excuses of himself to himself, and knew that they were valid, but that an onlooker would have had no clue to them.

For it was not her prettiness which had drawn his attention to the girl. It took no second glance to assure him that she was no countrywoman of his, but an American. Her features had the clean regularity, her complexion the pale, unfurrowed smoothness which is kept intact on the western side of the Atlantic and there alone. The Moroccan sunlight was proving in a dozen places the mistake the shadows made when they dulled the gold of her hair to brown. Her eyes matched the waters of the unrippled bay.

Though he recognized these things, they had not, in the first place, attracted Aylmer's attention. American girls—pretty American girls—are no rarity in Tangier since Mr. Cook threw over Moghreb-al-Aksa the ægis of his protection. Under ordinary circumstances he would have looked, approved, and, without altering his stride, passed on. But here was something which appealed to the inherited instincts of a gentleman. What was it?

Apprehension.

He felt no reasonable doubt on the subject. Among this girl's natural attributes, he told himself, were placidity, content, self-reliance. The first two were wanting. The third was strained. There was almost a sense of furtiveness in the glances which she turned to throw not only about but, occasionally, behind her. Frankly, she was afraid.

His interest fed upon observation. He glanced at her more narrowly, he observed her surroundings. He drew aside out of the mid-street traffic, and under pretence of lighting a cigarette, halted again in the shadow of an awning.

She was not alone. She held by the hand a small, alert-looking child—a boy, who watched the passers-by with the happy, unconcentrated interest of childhood. His eyes reviewed his surroundings without any of the surprise of unaccustomedness; obviously the scene was not strange to him. He smiled at Jew and Moslem, Christian and Infidel, with a pleasant patronage which one or two itinerant pedlars and shop touts returned with obsequious affability. One man, indeed,—a bronzed, 

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