her credence and
trust to the Lizard, she yet felt that he suited so ill with any English
surroundings that his incongruity would show up any boggled stitch in
their two disguises. So, while she nibbled the biscuit which Dick had
taken from the paper in his pocket and ordered her to eat, and listened
to the unintelligible valedictory advice which Pepe was ladling out in
Spanish, she was longing to be alone with the gentleman who looked so
impossible, and free from the company of the man who the very pricking
of her thumbs told her was a criminal, in spite of the modest bearing
and the uplifted gaze at his idol.

Did she also adore her Limping Dick, as Pepe his Cojeante? Was the one
worship antagonistic to the other? Why then--but Amaryllis, like many
another woman, was so good a logician that she knew when to halt on the
road to an awkward conclusion.

Pepe at last swept off his hat in profound obeisance to "la senorita
roja," took Dick's hand with reverence and his generous wad of notes
without shame, and hurried back on his road to "The Myrtles."

She looked at Dick's face as his eyes followed the Lizard, and read in
it an expression so strange and so mixed, that she turned again to take
her own last sight of the man she was glad to be rid of.

Pepe had vanished utterly.

"Yes," said Dick, following her thought, and responsive even to the
terms of her recent reflection, "he never would fit an English landscape
till it swallowed him."

"'Amigo de grillos'?" said the girl. "Why do you call him that? _Amigo_
must be _friend_. But _grillos_?"

"Irons--fetters," said Dick; and taking her by the arm, started in the
direction of "The Goat in Boots," walking with a curiously swaggering
gait which went far to mask his limp. "Amigos de grillos--fetter-pals.
We were chained together for six months."

"In--in prison? Oh, Dick!" she cried, "I knew he was horrid."

"And me?"

"I know you aren't," she replied.

"I'm afraid he is, from your point of view," he replied. "But Pepe el
Lagarto has one streak which interests me."

"Tell me," said Amaryllis.

And as they walked slowly towards the inn, he told her of Pepe and his
coca-leaves; of the Peruvian Indians' use of them to resist hunger and
fatigue; and of how the little man had given his all, which he could not
replace, to help la senorita roja over the roughness of her way.

"I had to keep a little in a bit of paper to satisfy him," said Dick.

"Then he's kind