arrested?" she asked, with artless wonder.

"No one would attempt to arrest him -no two!" exclaimed Francesco, with conviction, and quite a pretty pride in the distinguished brigand. "Oh, but it is not amusing," he added, quickly, for Kate's face wore an incredulous smile. "I would not like him to know that I had said anything to you to warn you. He doesn't want any one to interfere with him. All the peasants protect him. Isn't there any man here you know, who can walk home with you? I must go, or he will certainly suspect something."

'Well, go, Francesco," said Miss Gault, brightly but earnestly. "We will get home all right, I am sure. We have brigands in America, but they aren't a bit romantic. We call them tramps. Buona sera, Francesco, e grazie tanto. Come, Kate."

To get into the street they were obliged to go through the other room, and, unless they made a detour that might throw suspicion on Francesco, pass by the very table where the brigand sat with an air of being perfectly at home. So they went out just as they would have done had they received no warning. As they passed his table, Miss Gault let her eyes wander nonchalantly over him. She made allowance for the fervid imagination of the young waiter, though his sincerity and conviction were unquestionable. The idea of a notorious brigand sauntering into a popular restaurant in Rome and leisurely discussing his dinner smacked of Dumas and Monte Cristo's Luigi Vampa.

But her comprehensive, if fleeting, glance at the roughly handsome man made her feel that Francesco had select ed a worthy subject for his alarm. He was of more than medium height, powerfully built, with broad, deep chest and massive shoulders. His low forehead and scant portion of cheek free from beard were of a bronzed olive tint. His bushy beard and thick, crinkly mustache, as well as his wavy unbrushed hair, were glossily black. His large, well-shaped nose was thick at the base, with wide nostrils, and his heavy eyebrows were straight and overhanging. His eyes had that melted blackness which seems to focus to a burning glow, and the eyeballs, though notably white, were somewhat bloodshot. This rudely fascinating devil was

dressed like a well-to-do peasant of the Campagna.

He shot one piercing, hawklike glance at the two girls, which made Kate shiver, and suggested to Miss Gault a hungry panther prospecting for a meal. But she betrayed no more emotion than if he were one of Madame Tussaud's dusty wax figures. They left the restaurant without any appearance of haste.

When they had got a little distance away, and were walking more briskly along the wretchedly lighted street, Miss Gault gave a short laugh, and remarked: "Francesco may be right. I never saw anything more brigandish-looking in my life.

I've seen murderers too, but they were teething lambs compared to that beauty!"

"I wonder if it helps him any in his business to be so handsome?" returned Kate, with a nervous smile. "I would like to paint him, but I don't know if I could stand having him pose with the prospect of his turning those head-lights on me at any moment. Did you ever see such eyes in your life, Jean? I hope he didn't take a fancy to us. I don't want to figure in the South Boston papers as the victim of an Italian brigand. It's too much distinction. But what shall we do, Jean, if he Hush! Listen! There is some one following us; and trying to do it easy, too. Shall we run?"

Kate involuntarily quickened her steps, at the same time crowding closer to the other, with a childish trust that was comical when their respective physiques were considered. Kate could almost have taken Miss Gault in her arms and run with her.

"No!" was that small woman's prompt but emphatic reply. "Don't you suppose that great hulking thing could run us down before we got half-way home? But keep cool, Kate, whatever happens; and do exactly what I do."

"All right," returned Kate, with breathless but comforting submission. "I will; but what are you going to do?"

"I don't know myself yet," was Miss Gault's terse response. "Only follow my lead, whatever it is. Don't walk any faster. This may be nothing but a silly scare. The poor man's looks are against him, of course; but he may be a stolid, honest creature, enjoying a liqueur back in the restaurant without any idea of how we are flattering him by getting all wrought up. Still, those steps are

getting closer, and it may be he, and he may be- Well, never mind!" Miss Gault broke off, sharply. "Be ready, Kate. Follow my lead, or stand by and take it naturally."

They were approaching one of the few lamps on the street. The footsteps were also approaching them. By the time they were close to the light, the pursuer, if pursuer he was, was close at their heels. Suddenly Miss Gault stopped short, and stooping, began to arrange the lacing of her boot.

The man behind had to pull up sharply to avoid running against her. Then he swerved aside, and a compact, muscular figure, with bull-like massiveness of neck and shoulders, stalked by and irresolutely passed on.

"No. He won't let us," replied Miss Gault, with blunt force.

"Hadn't we better run?" queried Kate. "We may meet somebody. And if we find he is catching up, we can scream so that he will be scared away. This sort of thing will make him so mad that he'll want to do something disagreeable just to get even."

"I will do something," said Miss Gault, with an accent which showed her blood was up. "You just stand by as you have done, and don't lose your head."

Whatever terror the persistent dogging of their steps by the ruffian may have excited in her was lost in the indignation she felt at this fellow's persecution of two unprotected girls. She was stung to a fierce energy which brought its own support.

"Now!" she said, in quick command, a moment later.

"I think it was, but we didn't see his face," replied Miss Gault, non-committally. "This man seemed taller than the one in the restaurant. Listen, and see if he is coming after us, and do try not to hurry, Kate."

He was. The same heavy footfalls were gaining on them. The man had also turned. Kate darted an anxious side glance at Miss Gault's face. It was set and determined. The steps were uncomfortably near once more.

"Now, Kate!" said Miss Gault, in a low but distinct voice. "Wheel round again, and don't look at him at all."

They turned so sharply that once more the man instinctively lurched to one side to avoid impact with them. It may have been that he had not fully settled on his plan of action, or that he wished them to take to some street more opportune for his purpose. He walked on a little, as if carried forward by his own mo

With the word, the small woman whirled about and stood like a statue in her tracks, looking the black-a-vised brigand

had turned, she had sedulously avoided any glance at him. Now she confronted him with tremendous consciousness of his presence. She concentrated the whole force of her being into her glance, constraining the rest of her face to the most expressionless character possible, while her body seemed petrified to immobility the instant she had faced about. Nothing in her revealed life or feeling except her keen black eyes, which she fixed in an unwavering, imperious gaze on the brigand's fiery pupils, burning into her own.

This he had not expected. It was a decidedly new deal. Novel in its aggressiveness, but far more novel in its effect. In the first unavoidable conflict in their glances there had been a quick lifting of the man's bushy mustache and a sardonic glitter of white teeth. But that had been arrested as soon as he not only perceived but felt her gaze. As it faded away, his dark, mobile visage, which seemed such a play-ground for passions, subtly hardened into a savage revolt against this insolent audacity in an impotent morsel of womankind.

Then, as the weird, fearless, dominating mastery of that tense, coercive look gripped and held his inner consciousness as in a vise, the phase of wrathful resentment was swept away by an emotion akin to awe, quickly succeeded by a surging in

him of the strangest submission his rebel soul had ever known. Not the reluctant surrender of defeat, not the paralysis of panic, not the acquiescence of hostility soothed into amity. It was the necessary, harmonious, agreeable co-ordination of two basic forces of nature, in which the lesser ranged itself relatively to the domination of the greater restfully on its lower, proper plane.

As the being of the brigand passed through this transmuting gamut of emotions, the change that came over him, as his eyes, blazing beneath the heavy pent of brow, were held without a flicker of weakening by the woman's overmastering gaze, was like the slow drooping of an iron bar, heated till it bends with its own white-hot weight.

Slowly, as one in a dream, his mouth relaxed, his sturdy chest began dilating with a gentle respiration like a sleeping infant's, his feet moved mechanically to bear him out of her path, and with slow, dragging steps, as if his legs were benumbed, he passed on.

Clutching her companion's hand without a word, Miss Gault walked with measured composure to the nearest street opening into the one they were on, turned into its shadowy depths, and the moment the building on the corner screened them from view she said, with suppressed intensity: "Now, Kate, run for your life! I don't know how long that will carry."

Like two frightened does they sped down the dim Roman street, running lightly on the balls of their feet, darting swiftly into one that crossed it below, on which their lodging was, and flying like the wind along that. Panting, breathless, quivering, they reached the worn stone steps of their doorway, bounded up them, and Miss Gault gave a furious tug to the bell, another, and another. It seemed an age before the sound of feet hurrying within came to relieve them, and the bolt was at last drawn. Dashing by the affrighted maid, with one last effort Miss Gault flung to the door, and the two sank in panting exhaustion on the tessellated marble floor-safe!

It was an inglorious, most feminine device, that last salvation of their flying legs! But the brief, tremendous duel in which soul grappled with soul in naked force, and in which the woman's won, had been glory enough. The boldest, most devilish man in Italy had been

quelled by the power of a little woman's eye! The next day but one, Miss Gault told Kate they must go back to the Due Fratelli. It was her apprehension about Francesco which made this so imperative. She feared that the brigand might have suspected the boy of warning them, and perhaps had returned to take it out on him for that promenade à trois on the Roman street which had culminated in his overthrow. But when they started for the restaurant, each of the girls carried a "six-shooter" with her.

"I couldn't get keyed up to that pitch again, Kate," said Miss Gault, shaking her head slowly; "and if I did, one more such victory would be the death of me."

When they got to the restaurant it was a joyous relief to see Francesco there, and more alive than ever. He had evidently been looking for their return, and his greeting was particularly friendly and obsequious. While comporting himself with more than his wonted deference, the boy betrayed a sprightly importance and dignity which were soon explained.

66

He

What did you do to him?" he asked, naïvely, with the utmost animation, the moment the girls had seated themselves. "I met him late that same night. waylaid me. Ah, signora, I did not think I would ever serve you with spaghetti again! But he was not rough or angry. He was almost soft and humble. He asked if you came here often. I said you hardly ever came; that you had never been here but once or twice. 'Well, if she comes again,' said he, with his big strong voice, but a very nice manner, that little tame wild-cat of a diavolessa, ask her if she will marry Domenico Tiburzi. Say I will make a brigand of her that shall be the glory of Italy. Give her that,' he said. 'I wrote it myself. It is a love-song, and she will like it. And if she will not marry me, tell her to keep it, and she need fear no member of my band with that for passport. The King could not do as much for her.'"

Francesco, his eyes bright, his slender form erect, proudly drew from his breast a half-sheet of fine note-paper, on which was written, in a large heavy hand, a simple love song in a local dialect. He beamingly gave it to Miss Gault, alive with pride at being the intermediary between two such distinguished persons.

The title had been scratched out and a new one substituted: Alla Mia Cara

66

I

F a rather particular friend of mine shall ever come to be Czar (and I have, after all, one or two reasons to hope he may not), his first concern will be to issue these edicts:

1. A course of travel shall be compulsory for all able-bodied adult citizens.

2. No traveller shall print anything about any country whose language he cannot speak.

By this two-edged ukase my friendwho is much of a bigot in some matters -would bring public enlightenment to bloom by cutting off the twin tap-roots of ignorance. When no one can longer sit still in that birthright prejudice whereby we despise everything we know nothing about, nor anybody again disseminate the uninspired guesses of a travelled bat, why, then, declares my friend, it will become impossible for the world to keep on so stupid and intolerant as now.

The fantastic notions of Mexico which are too much current among us are not to be wondered at-though not many of us are as ignorant as the Washington statesman (a historic fact) who gasped as the back bowled him along the splendid Reforma on the evening of his arrival: "I never would have believed it if I

hadn't seen it!" he exclaimed. "Why, they have houses!"

But our average innocence is enough. Add to the eternal race prejudice that we are too drunken with our own progress to know or care much if there be more world beyond our fences; that we have saved from our insular inheritance the ancient grudges, if not much else that is English; that we still cultivate our foreign relations with a much more primitive implement than the Mexican plough; and that our ideas of the next-door republic are mostly derived from the typical Saxon "traveller" who roves deaf and dumb and with nose up-and it is inevitable that we should cherish a darkness which is one of the hardest things for our neighbors to understand. It is notorious to those who know both countries thoroughly that educated Americans are far more ignorant of Mexico than educated Mexicans are ignorant of the United States. One reason is, doubtless, that we are the more shining mark, but another is that the Latin-American nations have rather different ideas of a diplomatic service. They do not send to any country an ambassador who will be lost there without an interpreter. Even down to consuls this ridiculous superstition is operative. Men are selected who are at least