fter a pause, suddenly,
with a kind of suppressed force vibrating in his voice: "Well, our Sir
Chaps has gone."

"As unceremoniously as he came," she answered.

"It was terrible the way he broke Nogales's wrist!" remarked the
Doge narrowly.

"Terrible!" she assented as she folded her work, her head bent.

"Gone, and doubtless for good!" he continued, still watching her sharply.

"Very likely!" she answered carelessly without looking up. "His vagarious
playtime for this section is over."

"Just it! Just it!" the Doge exclaimed happily.

"And if Leddy overtakes him now, it's his own affair!"

"Yes, yes! He and his Wrath of God and Jag Ear are away to other worlds!"

"And other Leddys!"

"No doubt! No doubt!" concluded the Doge, in high good humor, all the
vexation of his diary seemingly forgotten as he left the room.

But, as the Doge and Mary were to find, they were alone among Little
Riversites in thinking that the breaking of Pedro Nogales's wrist was
horrible. Jim Galway, who had witnessed the affair, took a radically
contrary view, which everyone else not of the Leddy partisanship readily
accepted. Despite the frequency of Jack's visits to the Ewold garden and
all the happy exchange of pleasantries with his hosts, the community
could not escape the thought of a certain latent hostility toward Jack on
the part of the Doge, the more noticeable because it was so out of
keeping with his nature.

"Doge, sometimes I think you are almost prejudiced against Jack Wingfield
because he didn't let Leddy have his way," said Jim, with an outright
frankness that was unprecedented in speaking to Jasper Ewold. "You're
such a regular old Quaker!"

"But that little Mexican panting in abject fear against the hedge!"
persisted the Doge.

"A nice, peaceful little Mexican with a knife, sneaking up to plant it in
Jack's neck!"

"But Jack is so powerful! And his look! I was so near I could see it well
as he towered over Nogales!"

"Yes, no mistaking the look. I saw it in the _arroyo_. It made me think
of what the look of one of those old sea-fighters might have been like
when they lashed alongside and boarded the enemy."

"And the crack of the bone!" continued the Doge.

"Would you have a man turn cherub when he has escaped having his
jugular slashed by a margin of two or three inches? Would you have him
say, 'Please, naughty boy, give me your knife? You mustn't play with
such things!'"

"No! That's hyperbole!" the D