p, sprawling back with the
look in his washed-out eyes of a steer which has been hit squarely in
the center of the brow.

He fell back on his hands and lay still, dazed, muttering, and
struggling to regain the use of his members.

Before he could recover Peter was up and away, springing lightly into
the rickshaw. They turned and darted up one narrow, dirty alley into a
narrower and dirtier one, the two coolies shouting in blasphemous
chorus to clear the way as they advanced.

After a quarter of an hour of twisting and splashing and turning, the
coolies stopped in front of a shop of clay-blue stone.

Paying off the coolies, Peter entered, holding the door for the girl,
and sliding the bolt as he closed it after her.

He found himself in the presence of a very old, very yellow, and very
wrinkled Chinese woman, who smiled upon the two of them perplexedly,
nodding and smirking, as her frizzled white pigtail flopped and
fluttered about in the clutter on the shelves behind her.

It was a shop for an antique collector to discover, gorged with objects
of bronze, of carved sandalwood, of teak, grotesque and very old, of
shining red and blue and yellow beads, of old gold and old silver.

On the low, narrow counter she had placed a shallow red tray filled
with pearls; imitations, no doubt, but exquisite, perfect, of all
shapes; bulbular, pear, button, and of most enticing colors.

But the small girl was babbling, and a look of the most profound
surprise came slowly into the old woman's face. A little pearl-like
tear sparkled in either of her old eyes, and she gathered this
cherished grand-daughter from far away Macassar into her thin arms.

At that sight Peter felt himself out of place, an intruder, an
interloper. The scene was not meant for his eyes. He was an alien in
a strange land.

As he hesitated, conjuring up words of parting with his little friend,
he gasped. Peering through the thick window-pane in the door was the
red-faced man, and his look sent a curdle of fear into Peter's brave
heart. Would he shoot through the pane?

The girl, too, saw. She chattered a long moment to her wrinkled
grandmother, and this latter leaped to the door and shot a second
strong bolt. She pointed excitedly to a rear door, low and green, set
deep in the blue stone.

Peter leaped toward it. Half opening this, he saw a tiny garden
surrounded by low, gray walls. He paused. The maid from Macassar was
behind him. She follo