yours a good many inches. And
that's all there is to it."

He rose noiselessly, stretched himself, supple and stealthy, with
curious sideways movements of his head and unexpected elongations of his
thick body, glanced out of the corners of his eyes in the direction of
the door, and finally leaned back against the table, folding his arms on
his breast comfortably, in a completely human attitude.

"That's another thing you can tell a gentleman by--his freakishness.
A gentleman ain't accountable to nobody, any more than a tramp on the
roads. He ain't got to keep time. The governor got like this once in a
one-horse Mexican pueblo on the uplands, away from everywhere. He lay
all day long in a dark room--"

"Drunk?" This word escaped Schomberg by inadvertence at which he became
frightened. But the devoted secretary seemed to find it natural.

"No, that never comes on together with this kind of fit. He just lay
there full length on a mat, while a ragged, bare-legged boy that he had
picked up in the street sat in the patio, between two oleanders near the
open door of his room, strumming on a guitar and singing tristes to him
from morning to night. You know tristes--twang, twang, twang, aouh, hoo!
Chroo, yah!"

Schomberg uplifted his hands in distress. This tribute seemed to flatter
Ricardo. His mouth twitched grimly.

"Like that--enough to give colic to an ostrich, eh? Awful. Well, there
was a cook there who loved me--an old fat, Negro woman with spectacles.
I used to hide in the kitchen and turn her to, to make me dulces--sweet
things, you know, mostly eggs and sugar--to pass the time away. I am
like a kid for sweet things. And, by the way, why don't you ever have
a pudding at your tablydott, Mr. Schomberg? Nothing but fruit, morning,
noon, and night. Sickening! What do you think a fellow is--a wasp?"

Schomberg disregarded the injured tone.

"And how long did that fit, as you call it, last?" he asked anxiously.

"Weeks, months, years, centuries, it seemed to me," returned Mr. Ricardo
with feeling. "Of an evening the governor would stroll out into the sala
and fritter his life away playing cards with the juez of the place--a
little Dago with a pair of black whiskers--ekarty, you know, a
quick French game, for small change. And the comandante, a one-eyed,
half-Indian, flat-nosed ruffian, and I, we had to stand around and bet
on their hands. It was awful!"

"Awful," echoed Schomberg, in a Teutonic throaty tone of des