nterference of the
morning, had pleasant thoughts of luring him down a lonely road and
leaving him lying there. Which of the three suppositions might be
correct it was impossible to know, but the postscript decided him. He
beckoned to the messenger, and the man ran eagerly forward. "I will
come," said Roddy. The man smiled with pleasure, bowed to him, and
dived into the darkness. As he ran down the street Roddy stood
listening until the soft patter of the sandals had ceased, and then
slowly returned to the hotel.

For an hour, still speculating as to who his anonymous friend might
be, he stood, smoking, upon the balcony. On the quay below him a negro
policeman dozed against a hawser-post. A group of cargadores,
stretched at length upon stacks of hides, chattered in drowsy
undertones. In the moonlight the lamps on the fishing-boats and on the
bridge, now locked against the outside world, burned mistily, and the
deck of the steamer moored directly below him was as deserted and
bare, as uncanny and ghostlike, as the deck of the ship of the Ancient
Mariner. Except for the chiming of ships' bells, the whisper of the
running tide, and the sleepy murmur of the longshoremen, the town of
Willemstad was steeped in sleep and silence. Roddy, finding he could
arrive at no satisfactory explanation of the note, woke the night
porter, and telling that official he was off before daybreak to shoot
wild pigeons, and wanted his coffee at that hour, betook himself to
his cot. It seemed as though he had not twice tossed on the pillow
before the night-watchman stood yawning at his side.

Roddy and Peter occupied adjoining rooms, and the door between the two
was unlocked. When Roddy had bathed, dressed, and, with a feeling of
some importance, stuck his revolver into his pocket, he opened the
door, and, still suspicious that his faithful friend was sending him
on a wild-goose chase, for a few moments stood beside his bed. But
Peter, deep in the sleep of innocence, was breathing evenly,
stentoriously. Not without envying him the hours of rest still before
him, Roddy helped himself to Peter's revolver, left him a line saying
it was he who had borrowed it, and went out into the dark and empty
streets.

Half awake and with his hunger only partially satisfied, Roddy now
regarded his expedition with little favor. He reverted strongly to the
theory that some one was making a fool of him. He reminded himself
that if in New York he had received such