pon the back of Dulcie's drowsy head.

As for the Prophet, perched on the desk top, he continued to gaze upon
shapes invisible to all things mortal save only such as he.

* * * * *

The postman's lively whistle aroused Dulcie. The Prophet, knowing him,
observed his advent with indifference.

"Hello, girlie," he said;--he was a fresh-faced and flippant young
man. "Where's Pop?" he added, depositing a loose sheaf of letters on
the desk before her and sketching in a few jig steps with his feet.

"I don't know," she murmured, patting with one slim hand her pink and
yawning lips, and watching him unlock the post-box and collect the
outgoing mail. He lingered a moment to caress the Prophet, who endured
it without gratitude.

"You better go to bed if you want to grow up to be a big, sassy girl
some day," he advised Dulcie. "And hurry up about it, too, because I'm
going to marry you if you behave." And, with a last affable caress for
the Prophet, the young man went his way, singing to himself, and
slamming the iron grille smartly behind him.

Dulcie, rising from her chair, sorted the mail, sleepily tucking each
letter and parcel into its proper pigeon-hole. There was a thick
letter for Barres. This she held in her left hand, remembering his
request that she call him up when the last mail arrived.

This she now prepared to do--had already reseated herself, her right
hand extended toward the telephone, when a shadow fell across the
desk, and the Prophet turned, snarled, struck, and fled.

At the same instant grimy fingers snatched at the letter which she
still held in her left hand, twisted it almost free of her desperate
clutch, tore it clean in two at one violent jerk, leaving her with
half the letter still gripped in her clenched fist.

She had not uttered a sound during the second's struggle. But
instantly an ungovernable rage blazed up in her at the outrage, and
she leaped clean over the desk and sprang at the throat of the
one-eyed man.

His neck was bony and muscular; she could not compass it with her
slender hands, but she struck at it furiously, driving a sound out of
his throat, half roar, half cough.

"Give me my letter!" she breathed. "I'll kill you if you don't!" Her
furious little hands caught his clenched fist, where the torn letter
protruded, and she tore at it and beat upon it, her teeth set and her
grey Irish eyes afire.

Twice the one-eyed man flung her to her knee