ching up the bank. Across the boggy street beyond the white picket
fence the green blinds of a chamber window in an old-fashioned Southern
house were thrown open, and two feminine faces peered forth, interested
spectators of the scene.

"Here, my man!" said Waring, in low tone, "you have earned no five
dollars, and you know it. Get your cab out, come to Madame d'Hervilly's,
where you were called, and whatever is your due will be paid you; but no
more of this swearing or threatening,--not another word of it."

"I want my money, I say, and I mean to have it. I'm not talking to you;
I'm talking to the lady that hired me."

"But I have not the money. It is for my mother--Madame d'Hervilly--to
pay. You will come there."

"I want it now, I say. I've got to hire teams to get my cab out. I got
stalled here carrying you and your child, and I mean to have my pay
right now, or I'll know the reason why. Your swell friend's got the
money. It's none of my business how you pay him."

But that ended the colloquy. Waring's fist landed with resounding whack
under the cabman's jaw, and sent him rolling down into the mud below. He
was up, floundering and furious, in less than a minute, cursing horribly
and groping in the pocket of his overcoat.

"It's a pistol, lieutenant. Look out!" cried Jeffers.

There was a flash, a sharp report, a stifled cry from the cab, a scream
of terror from the child. But Waring had leaped lightly aside, and
before the half-drunken brute could cock his weapon for a second shot he
was felled like a log, and the pistol wrested from his hand and hurled
across the levee. Another blow crashed full in his face as he strove to
find his feet, and this time his muddled senses warned him it were best
to lie still.

Two minutes more, when he lifted his battered head and strove to stanch
the blood streaming from his nostrils, he saw the team driving briskly
away up the crest of the levee; and, overcome by maudlin contemplation
of his foeman's triumph and his own wretched plight, the cabman sat him
down and wept aloud.

And to his succor presently there came ministering angels from across
the muddy way, one with a brogue, the other in a bandanna, and between
the two he was escorted across a dry path to the magnolia-fringed
enclosure, comforted with soothing applications without and within, and
encouraged to tell his tale of woe. That he should wind it up with
vehement expression of his ability to thrash a thousand