a hasty and unpalatable meal.

"Can you tell me where I can get a bed for the night?" he asked, turning
to his host.

The evident refinement in his voice made that worthy look up from his
literary occupation in some startled curiosity.

"They ain't many places where they take niggers," he said with an
unpleasant grin. "But I guess you might find a berth at Sally Munn's, if
you ain't too particular about morals. She's a merlatter herself; keeps
a place 'bout six houses down, first street to the left." The man
stared impudently as he spoke, but Ram Juna said, "Thank you," with his
usual politeness as he went out. The Hindu noted the impudent stare, but
he went away with an indifferent air.

"See here!" said the proprietor to his single other customer, "ain't
this picture in the paper the very image of that black feller that just
skipped?"

"Say, it's him!"

"We'd ought to look this up. There's a big reward offered."

While Ram Juna slept, lying in all his day clothes, some subtle
subconsciousness kept watch, became aware of disturbance, and roused his
body to attention. He got up, tiptoed to the open window and looked out
at the group of men standing below in the darkness.

"Aw, shut up, Sal," one of them was saying to an angry woman in the
doorway. "We ain't goin' to raid ye, though Lord knows you wouldn't have
no kick comin' if we did. What we want is that black feller that come
to-night. We suspect he's one of a gang of counterfeiters that the St.
Etienne police are after; and we ain't goin' to lose the chance of the
reward. You fellers keep right under the window, and I'll take you six
up stairs with me. He's big and he may show fight. Get your guns ready.
Don't shoot to kill. We want to deliver him alive. But you needn't be
afraid to use a ball on him."

Ram Juna drew away from the window and smiled his old Buddha smile. With
clumsy creaking precautions they mounted the stair. The moment for the
climax came; there was a rush all together, a breaking down of the shaky
door. The crew burst into the room--an empty room--and stared puzzled
and stupefied at the walls and at each other.

"Well, if that don't beat all!" ejaculated the sheriff. "Where in ----
has that fellow disappeared to?"

"They say," said Josiah Strait, a lank westernized Yankee, "that them
Hindu jugglers and lamas, and so forth, has supernatural gifts, and I
begin to believe it."

* * * * *

Som