with a military imperial, whose dignity, benevolence, and temper, resembling dynamite, were so mixed in him as to keep all the resident consuls happy with exercising their diplomacy. He glowered at Sadler, sat down, and snorted. "Now, Excellency," Dorcas said, briskly. "This way. Understand your position. All right. Reasonable. First, if Pete Hillary was Jamaican, he was no citizen of Portate. See? No good, any

way.

Consequently you don't care about him. No. British consul, he don't care, except for the principle. Not really. No. But you want to satisfy consul, meaning his principle. That's so. Then the Hottentot society around Ferdinand Street. Got to fix them. Course you have. Don't want to disoblige honest voters of Ferdinand Street. No. Third, you got to celebrate the majesty of laws and municipal guards. Last, the Transport Company. We don't want the Kid to chew his thumbs in jail for wetting folks. Good land! no! You want to satisfy us. Complicated, ain't it? But you're equal to it. Surely. Now what's needed? Something bold. Something skilful. We have it. Get him banished, Excellency. Get him banished. Executive edict from the President. Big gun. Hottentots pleased and scared. Majesty of Great Britain pacified. Municipal guards celebrated. Transport Company don't object. Everybody happy. There, now!"

He put his thumbs in the armholes of his waistcoat, leaned back, and beamed. "Hum! Ha! You assist?" asked the Mayor.

"We do."

The Mayor gazed at him fiercely a moment, relaxed, smiled, and patted his knee. "It is perhaps not, Señor Dorcas,-not impossible."

"There now, Kid! Fixed you."

Sadler said nothing, and looked down at the chain-gang below. The Plaza was full of moving noises. Women gossiped under the stiff palms and beside the brokendown fountain in the centre. Idlers sat in wicker chairs on the hotel piazza opposite, on the steps below. The shops were open. The butcher on the corner drove a dog into the street. A crowd of boys chased the dog, yelping, down the hidden alley.

"It won't do," said Sadler, mournfully, at last. "It's more interestin' than I'd suppose you was up to, Steve, but comparatively it's dull, and besides, it ain't safe. I'd have to come back and see how bad I was banished. That's more certain than probable. Not that I'd throw you down this way, Excellency," with melancholy eyes fixed on the Mayor and a voice of solemn bass, "without puttin' up another scheme, for it wouldn't be treatin' you upright. But makin' a supposition, now, suppose I was moderately arrested and set to bossin' that gang out there

for the benefit of Portate, and quartered, for safekeepin' till the trial, at the Hotel Republic as a partial return for bein' exhibited in disgrace. Suppose it took me three days to finish that little job they're potterin' with; by that time I'd be ready to say, escape, say, in the Albany that sails for Porto Rico Thursday. I shrinks, I fades away, ghostly and remorseful,

from

the majestic shadow of the law. Suppose you was to put up a proclamation subsequent and immediate offerin' a reward for me. Now, as to fugitive or as to exile, looking at it from my standpoint, I makes the choice. I says, fugitive. It suits me better. It's elegant and inexpensive. I ain't worthy of any executive edict. As a fugitive I wouldn't have to fidgit to get even with somebody. But take your standpoint, Excellency. There's iniquitous limits to you. For instance, you can't put up an executive edict by yourself. Consequently there's no glory in it for you. But you can put up a proclamation-say, 'Five hundred dollars reward for capture and return of one Sadler, that committed humiliatin' assault on one Hillary, and spiled the stomachs and biled the skin of patriotic municipal guardsmen, which shameful person is more'n six feet of iniquity, and his features is homely beyond belief, complexion dilapidated and conscience dyspeptic.' Course, Excellency, there couldn't anybody give you points on a proclamation. I ain't doin' that, but I was supposin'-say, printed in the national colors. Folks is impressed by a spectacular reward precedin' a festival of language, and maybe they'd both better be steep. Printed, posted, scattered over Ferdinand Street and the British consulate,-what happens? British majesty pacified, Ferdinand Street solid for the re-election of a Mayor who puts that value and estimate on the dignity of Pete Hillary. Transport Company don't object. Everybody happy except me. Don't mind me. I go my lonesome way."

Sadler turned away, isolated and depressed, to watch the chain-gang in the Plaza.

The Mayor's eyes glistened with appreciation, with feeling. Dorcas pulled his beard and surrendered reluctantly.

"There'd be more in it for you, Excellency. That's a fact."

The Mayor came over and patted Sadler on the shoulder with his soft, fat hand. His voice showed emotion.

"Ah, my friend! yet be not sad. To be sacrificed to public policy, to public good, is noble."

"Recollect that proclamation, Excellency. You can't describe me too villainous."

SADLER'S FRIENDS, WHO HAD COME TO WATCH HIM ESCAPE

"I will remember," said the Mayor, brokenly-"I will remember."

"But you won't go under five hundred, -er-forgive my weakness, as a tribute of your respect, private, just between you and me, as friends that may never meet again."

"I will remember. Ah, my friend! Yet be firm."

Sadler left the City Hall with a file of pink soldiers, who acted shy and kept aside from him, as not knowing in what direction he might be dangerous. He was put in charge of the chain-gang, and introduced among them some sorrow and haste. He spent his three days at the Hotel Republic, taking things joyously

at the hotel bar at municipal expense. There were soirées on the hotel piazza, and terror and discipline in the chaingang. By the rate the work of the Plaza pavement went on he was worth the municipal expense.

The only point where he didn't appear scrupulous, considerate, was in this going around to bid people good-by.

It was youthful, simple - hearted, affecting, but it seemed inconsistent. It harrowed the Mayor's feelings, and he showed it. He said they were harrowed. He grew nervous. For if a man agrees to be a fugitive, to escape in a manner described by himself-his very words-as "ghostly and remorseful," it stands to reason he ought not to make too much display, nor tell the British consul that the Mayor was going to assassinate him and that was the reason for these adieus, to which the British consul said, "Gammon!" Yet this seemed to be the idea current in Ferdinand Street. It was why the Hottentot society were peaceful for the time being. But what made the Mayor nervous was the way Portate was keyed up for tragedy, and the way Sadler acted as if he wasn't going to escape mysteriously. For he had to please the

of water widened and the pier.

British consul, and please Ferdinand

Street and the Transport Company; but the Hottentots were skittish and Sadler inconsistent, and the Mayor was nervous.

On Thursday morning the dock was crowded with Sadler's friends, come to watch him escape. Others there were who had heard he was to attempt it, and thought to see him grasped and detained by a vindictive city guard. They expected a surprise. It puzzled them when the peaceful strip between the Albany

Little Irish was not there, though I had supposed he would vanish with Sadler; but the British and American consuls were there, and Steve Dorcas with others of the Transport Company, people from the Hotel Republic, and Hillary and a group of negroes from Ferdinand Street, looking stupefied. I heard the British consul say to the American,

"But you know, of course, that's all what you call a 'put-up job '--one of your Americanisms."

"Well-you don't care."

"But really, you know, it's not decent."

Sadler stood on the after-deck of the Albany with his hat off, as if asking a benediction on Portate.

An hour later the Albany was barely out of sight, but the proclamations were posted in Ferdinand Street, the Plaza, and at the consulates: "Three hundred dollars reward for the capture and return, dead or alive, of one known as 'Kid Sadler,' a fugitive from public justice, who committed felonious and insulting assault on Pedro Hillary, the well-known and respected resident of Ferdinand Street. It is suspected that, if still in

the city, he will endeavor to escape by steamer in disguise. Description," which description of him was remarkable for length and vindictive scorn.

Then the American consul said to the British consul: "I'll tell you what that is, old man. That's a porous plaster. It has some holes. But it's meant to cover your indecency."

IV

On tropical nights when the moonlight is so yellow, so rich, the odor of the forest is heavy and sweet; you may come to fancy the two united, and this light itself a kind of scented varnish, a phosphorescent mould. Such a night it was that Thursday.

I was sitting on my piazza, and I was thinking that this mystery in the makeup of Sadler was maybe a belated youthfulness. For you take a boy, and he has some oddities. He's innocent and he's shrewd. He's reckless, remorseful, and astonished at himself as something he can't get used to. He has growing-pains in his mind and an instinct for a row. You set him a dare, and you set him tingling. He has fits and starts. He's sentimental and humorous. His enthusiasms are lyrical. Those feelings are more liquid that grow crusted and stiff with after-time.

I've read somewhere to the effect that a poet is one who is such because something in him never grows old, as in another man, but always that something in him is fresh and barbarous. I thought maybe the Kid was a poet. Else why would he act that way, as he surely did?

It was nearly ten o'clock. A flamingo rose from the roadside and flew over the house like a ghost, trailing his long legs.

The gate creaked. Sadler opened it. He came up the path like a ghost.

"How do?" he said. He sat down and twankled his banjo.

I asked, "Why?" I said it didn't seem reasonable. It was well enough for a flamingo, but a man has responsibilities. It's not right to be a floating, irrelevant object in the tropical night, a presence, an impossible vision.

He sat in the moonlight, big-handed and lean, homely and awkward, with long, ragged, and sagging mustache, an unclassified chunk of humanity, belonging

nowhere in particular. Being a poet didn't seem to explain him at that point, but his speech was candor.

"Irish hooked the Harvest Moon," he said. "He lay outside for the Albany, so I jumped overboard."

"Changed your mind?"

"Well-the Albany runs to Porto Rico and New York, but the Richmond leaves early tomorrow for New Orleans. I thought we'd better go on the Richmond, and enlist for the Cuban war. But I expect Irish won't like Cuba. It'll make him nervous. I made a 'Farewell' goin' out. I thought maybe I'd come around and tell it to you." He sang, hoarsely: "Dorcas and Stanley, now adieu; I drops a briny tear on, Mayor, my memories of you;

Chepa, that brought the beer on,
Farewell across the waters blue.