, like water
past a stone, he seemed to ask nothing of the world on which he looked
out with such deep-set and impassive eyes. He seemed content with his
lot. He seemed to have achieved a Nirvana-like indifferency towards
all his kind.

Yet there were times, as he waited beside his stand, as lethargic as a
lobster in a fish-peddler's window, when his flaccid, exploring fingers
dug deeper into one of those capacious side-pockets and there came in
contact with two oddly shaped wristlets of polished steel. At such
times his intent eyes would film, as the eyes of a caged eagle
sometimes do. Sometimes, too, he would smile with the half-pensive
Castilian smile of an uncouth and corpulent Cervantes.

But as a rule his face was expressionless. About the entire moss-green
figure seemed something faded and futile, like a street-lamp left
burning after sunrise. At other times, as the patrolman on the beat
sauntered by in his authoritative blue stippled with its metal buttons,
the old peddler's watching eyes would wander wistfully after the
nonchalant figure. At such times a meditative and melancholy
intentness would fix itself on the faded old face, and the stooping old
shoulders would even unconsciously heave with a sigh.

As a rule, however, the great green-clad figure with its fringe of
white hair--the fringe that stood blithely out from the faded hat brim
like the halo of some medieval saint on a missal--did not permit his
gaze to wander so far afield.

For, idle as that figure seemed, the brain behind it was forever
active, forever vigilant and alert. The deep-set eyes under their lids
that hung as loose as old parchment were always fixed on the life that
flowed past them. No face, as those eyes opened and closed like the
gills of a dying fish, escaped their inspection. Every man who came
within their range of vision was duly examined and adjudicated. Every
human atom of that forever ebbing and flowing tide of life had to pass
through an invisible screen of inspection, had in some intangible way
to justify itself as it proceeded on its unknown movement towards an
unknown end. And on the loose-skinned and haggard face, had it been
studied closely enough, could have been seen a vague and wistful note
of expectancy, a guarded and muffled sense of anticipation.

Yet to-day, as on all other days, nobody stopped to study the old
cement-seller's face. The pink-cheeked young patrolman, swinging back
on his beat, ta