ple out of a paper bag, had unwisely chosen his moment to try the
crossing. He was evidently an indoors sort of man and no shakes at
crossing streets, owing to the introspective nature of his mind. A
grocery wagon shaved him by an inch. It was doing things to the
speed-limit, this wagon, because a dashing police patrol was close
behind, treading on its tail and indignantly clanging it to turn out,
which it could not possibly do. To avoid erasing the little citizen, the
patrol man had to pull sharply out; and this manoeuvre, as Fate had
written it, brought him full upon the great dog Behemoth, who, having
slipped across the tracks, stood gravely waiting for the flying wagon to
pass. Thus it became a clear case of _sauve qui peut_, and the devil
take the hindermost. There was nothing in the world for Behemoth to do
but wildly leap under the hoofs for his life. This he did successfully.
But on the other side he met the spectacled citizen full and fair, and
down they went together with a thud.

The little man came promptly to a sitting posture and took stock of the
wreck. His hat he could not see anywhere, the reason being that he was
sitting on it. The paper bag, of course, had burst; some of the apples
had rolled to amazing distances, and newsboys, entire strangers to the
fallen gentleman, were eating them with cries of pleasure. This he saw
in one pained glance. But on the very heels of the dog, it seemed, came
hurrying a girl with marks of great anxiety on her face.

"Can you possibly forgive him? That fire-alarm thing scared him
crazy--he's usually so good! You aren't hurt, are you? I do hope so much
that you aren't?"

The young man, sitting calmly in the street, glanced up at Miss Weyland
with no sign of interest.

"I have no complaint to make," he answered, precisely; "though the loss
of my fruit seems unfortunate, to say the least of it."

"I know! The way they fell on them," she answered, as self-unconscious
as he--"quite as though you had offered to treat! I'm very much
mortified--But--_are_ you hurt? I thought for a minute that the coal
cart was going right over you."

A crowd had sprung up in a wink; a circle of interested faces watching
the unembarrassed girl apologizing to the studious-looking little man
who sat so calmly upon his hat in the middle of the street. Meantime all
traffic on that side was hopelessly blocked. Swearing truck drivers
stood up on their seats from a block away to see what had halt