there was a German behind the next tree. Henri Dumain, our
little old French David who fought the tragic duel of tooth and claw
with his German Jonathan in Thornsen's Elite Restaurant, stung him with
that most insulting word in any known tongue--"Lache!"--and threatened
him with uplifted cane; and poor Plooie slunk away. But I think it was
the fact that he who stayed at home when others went forward had set a
picture of Albert of Belgium in the window of his cubbyhole that most
exasperated us against him. Tactless, to say the least! His call grew
quavery and furtive. Annie Oombrella ceased to sing at work. Matters
looked ill for the Garins.

The evil came to a head the week after David and Jonathan broke off all
relations. Perhaps that tragedy of shattered friendship (afterward
rejoined through the agency of the great peacemaker, Death) had got on
our nerves. Ordinarily, had Plooie chased a small boy who had tipped a
barrel down his basement steps, nothing would have come of it. But the
chase took him into the midst of a group of the younger and more
boisterous element, returning from a business meeting of the Gentlemen's
Sons of Avenue B, and before he could turn, they had surrounded him.

"Here's our little 'ee-ro!" "Looka the Frenchy that won't fight!"
"Safety first, hey, Plooie?" "Charge umbrellas--backward, march!"

Plooie did his best to break for a run through, which was the worst
thing he could have tried. They collared him. By that contact he became
their captive, their prey. What to do with him? To loose a prisoner,
once in the hand, is an unthinkable anti-climax. Somebody developed an
inspirational thought: "Ride him on a rail!"

Near by, a house front under repair supplied a scantling. Plooie was
hustled upon it. He fell off. They jammed him back again. He clung,
wide-eyed, white-faced, and silent. The mob, for it was that now, bore
him with jeers and jokes and ribaldry along the edge of the park.

When they came within my ken he was riding high, and the mob was being
augmented momentarily from every quarter. I looked about for Terry the
Cop. But Terry was elsewhere. It is not beyond the bounds of reasonable
probability that he had absented himself on purpose. "God hates a
coward" is a tenet of Terry's creed. I confess to a certain sympathy
with it myself. After all, a harsh lesson might not be amiss for Plooie,
the recusant. Composing my soul to a non-intervention policy, I leaned
back on my bench, whe