afe to be an American
citizen in this town, Mr. Selby."

"Does it?" Selby sat back sharply in his chair, his ragged moustache
bristling, his glasses malevolently askew on his nose. "You're a
mighty fine example of an American citizen, aren't you? Say, Waters,
you don't think you can put that over again, do you?"

"Eh?" Tim Waters opened his pale blue eyes in the mildest surprise.
"Why, Mr. Selby?" he began, fumbling in his pocket. The vice-consul
interrupted him with a snarl.

"Now you don't want to pull that everlasting passport of yours on me
again," he cried. "Every crook and hobo that's chased off a steamer
into this town has got papers as good as yours, red seal an' all. You
seem to think that bein' an American citizen's a kind of license to
play hell and then come here to be squared. Well, I'm going to prove
to you that it's not."

Waters was watching him as he spoke with something of that still
interest which he had given to the scene beyond the window. Now he
smiled faintly.

"But say, Mr. Selby," he protested gently. "It it ain't the sergeant
I'm worried about. I'll get him all right. But there's what they call
a protocol fer breakin' up that istvostchik, an' you bein' our consul
here."

Selby rose, jerking his chair back on its castors. "Cut that out," he
shrilled. "Your consul, eh? Your kind hasn't got any consul, not if
you had forty passports see? You get out o' this office right now;
and if they hand you six months with that protocol."

He was a ridiculous little man when he was angry; the shape of him as
he stood, pointing peremptorily across the room to the door, rose
grotesque and pitiable against the window. The wanderer, still
leaning on the desk, looked over at him with lips parted as though he
found a profit of interest even in his anger.

"And you can tell your friends, if you got any," fulminated the
vice-consul, "that this place isn't."

He broke off short in mid-word; the rigid and imperative arm with
which he still pointed to the door lost its stiffening; he made a
snatch at his sliding glasses, saved them, and stood scaring. Waters
turned his head to look likewise.

"This is the American Consulate?" inquired a voice from the doorway.

For the moment neither answered, and the newcomer came down between
the tables towards the light of the window.

Of the two men, it was assuredly Waters, who had followed the lust of
the eye across the continents, who was best able to flavor and r