get out. Ye are frindly with um,
and ye would be selling um. Out with ye quick, or I'll give ye a
start."

Murray gazed at the officer with serene and virtuous dignity.

"I would be simply doing my duty as a citizen and gentleman," he
said, severely, "if I could assist the law in laying hold of one of
its offenders."

Murray hurried back to the bench in the park. He folded his arms and
shrank within his clothes to his ghost-like presentment.

Ten minutes afterward the Captain arrived at the rendezvous, windy
and thunderous as a dog-day in Kansas. His collar had been torn
away; his straw hat had been twisted and battered; his shirt with
ox-blood stripes split to the waist. And from head to knee he
was drenched with some vile and ignoble greasy fluid that loudly
proclaimed to the nose its component leaven of garlic and kitchen
stuff.

"For Heaven's sake, Captain," sniffed Murray, "I doubt that I would
have waited for you if I had suspected you were so desperate as to
resort to swill barrels. I"--

"Cheese it," said the Captain, harshly. "I'm not hogging it yet.
It's all on the outside. I went around on Essex and proposed
marriage to that Catrina that's got the fruit shop there. Now, that
business could be built up. She's a peach as far as a Dago could be.
I thought I had that senoreena mashed sure last week. But look what
she done to me! I guess I got too fresh. Well there's another scheme
queered."

"You don't mean to say," said Murray, with infinite contempt, "that
you would have married that woman to help yourself out of your
disgraceful troubles!"

"Me?" said the Captain. "I'd marry the Empress of China for one bowl
of chop suey. I'd commit murder for a plate of beef stew. I'd steal
a wafer from a waif. I'd be a Mormon for a bowl of chowder."

"I think," said Murray, resting his head on his hands, "that I would
play Judas for the price of one drink of whiskey. For thirty pieces
of silver I would"--

"Oh, come now!" exclaimed the Captain in dismay. "You wouldn't do
that, Murray! I always thought that Kike's squeal on his boss was
about the lowest-down play that ever happened. A man that gives his
friend away is worse than a pirate."

Through the park stepped a large man scanning the benches where the
electric light fell.

"Is that you, Mac?" he said, halting before the derelicts. His
diamond stickpin dazzled. His diamond-studded fob chain assisted.
He was big and smooth and well fed. "Yes, I see it's