note the
scars on his poor ribs? He may even have known me, myself. Hold!"

He caught up a leather thong and cracked it like a whip. The lion spat,
but rather like puss at the fireside. His great yellow eyes blinked
mildly and the lines about them were lines of worry, very pathetic to
see, and his chin whiskers waggled. "Don't be hard on him," I begged.

"Stand there!" cried Angus Jones.

The beast reared meekly on his haunches and stayed so until permitted to
drop. Angus Jones waved a ham bone and spoke with emotion.

"They accused us as monarchists. Their only mistake was that we are
kings. And here is another royalty who shall enter upon his own this
tide. Royal shall be our portion. Come, friends, once more into the
breach of hospitality, and we'll teach these yellow simps who they've
been entertaining unawares. Come where glory waits!"

* * * * *

We went forth into Funchal, and before our steps as we moved it might
have been a city of the dead, but further about it seethed. No one
crossed our path, and every house was barred and bolted where we passed,
but only just in time. There was a scuttling, a screaming, and a terror
in the air, a slamming of doors and windows, a crying upon saints and
small children. Ox sleds stampeded in the next square. A flock of goats
climbed a garden wall ahead of us. Dogs and boys went heeling it up
every alley, and people swept past the street ends in a froth of white
faces. Even church bells began to chatter and toll as for a pestilence.

* * * * *

Through all we paced in stately procession, slowly, munching in content,
and Thomas with a skittish wreath of sausages round his neck, so that I
know not what chance kept the alarm from reaching our new acquaintance
until the very instant of our entrance into his bazaar--where there was
no back door. The drop of his jaw, his squeal as he climbed the shelves
against an avalanche of bottles and demijohns, his frantic perch among
the basketwork--these were rare tribute....

"Are you there, old dear, late of Lawrence, Mass.?" inquired Angus
Jones. "The drinks are on us. What will you have, Martini Angostura de
Souse?"

Thomas was somewhat curious of Martinho and sat him down in the midst of
the shop. Here he yawned upward chastely, and the quaking of Martinho
made the glassware dance.

"Don't let that thing loose!" begged the liquor dealer. And indeed
Thomas as an ind