, she will admire my courage."

I was elated that the affair had gone off so smoothly, and I felt like
returning home and taking a long, full sleep, like a tired working man.
When people passed me, I contemplated their stupidity with a sense of
satisfaction.

But those accursed little white tiles.

I heard a shrill crying and chattering behind me, and, looking back, I
saw them, blood-stained and impassioned, raising their little hands and
screaming "Murder! It was he!" I have said that they had little hands. I
am not sure of it, but they had some means of indicating me as
unerringly as pointing fingers. As for their movement, they swept along
as easily as dry, light leaves are carried by the wind. Always they were
shrilly piping their song of my guilt.

My friend, may it never be your fortune to be pursued by a crowd of
little blood-stained tiles. I used a thousand means to be free from the
clash-clash of these tiny feet. I ran through the world at my best
speed, but it was no better than that of an ox, while they, my pursuers,
were always fresh, eager, relentless.

I am an ingenious person, and I used every trick that a desperate,
fertile man can invent. Hundreds of times I had almost evaded them when
some smouldering, neglected spark would blaze up and discover me.

I felt that the eye of conviction would have no terrors for me, but the
eyes of suspicion which I saw in city after city, on road after road,
drove me to the verge of going forward and saying, "Yes, I have
murdered."

People would see the following, clamorous troops of blood-stained tiles,
and give me piercing glances, so that these swords played continually at
my heart. But we are a decorous race, thank God. It is very vulgar to
apprehend murderers on the public streets. We have learned correct
manners from the English. Besides, who can be sure of the meaning of
clamouring tiles? It might be merely a trick in politics.

Detectives? What are detectives? Oh, yes, I have read of them and their
deeds, when I come to think of it. The prehistoric races must have been
remarkable. I have never been able to understand how the detective
navigated in stone boats. Still, specimens of their pottery excavated in
Taumalipas show a remarkable knowledge of mechanics. I remember the
little hydraulic--what's that? Well, what you say may be true, my
friend, but I think you dream.

The little stained tiles. My friend, I stopped in an inn at the ends of
the earth, a