" He
nodded at the fat little orange trees. "We may live to take our chow
under those yet, of an evening. Also a drink. Eh?"

The lantern skipped before them across the garden, through a penitential
courtyard, and under a vaulted way to the main door and the road. With
Rudolph, the obscure garden and echoing house left a sense of magical
ownership, sudden and fleeting, like riches in the Arabian Nights. The
road, leaving on the right a low hill, or convex field, that heaved
against the lower stars, now led the wanderers down a lane of hovels,
among dim squares of smoky lamplight.

Wu, their lantern-bearer, had turned back, and they had begun to pass a
few quiet, expectant shops, when a screaming voice, ahead, outraged the
evening stillness.

At the first words, Heywood doubled his pace.

"Come along. Here's a lark--or a tragedy."

Jostling through a malodorous crowd that blockaded the quarrel, they
gained the threshold of a lighted shop. Against a rank of orderly
shelves, a fat merchant stood at bay, silent, quick-eyed, apprehensive.
Before him, like an actor in a mad scene, a sobbing ruffian, naked to
the waist, convulsed with passion, brandished wild fists and ranted with
incredible sounds. When breath failed, he staggered, gasping, and swept
his audience with the glazed, unmeaning stare of drink or lunacy. The
merchant spoke up, timid and deprecating. As though the words were
vitriol, the other started, whirled face to face, and was seized with a
new raving.

Something protruded at his waistband, like a rudimentary, Darwinian
stump. To this, all at once, his hand flung back. With a wrench and a
glitter, he flourished a blade above his head. Heywood sprang to
intervene, in the same instant that the disturber of trade swept his arm
down in frenzy. Against his own body, hilt and fist thumped home, with
the sound as of a football lightly punted. He turned, with a freezing
look of surprise, plucked at the haft, made one step calmly and
tentatively toward the door, stumbled, and lay retching and coughing.

The fat shop-keeper wailed like a man beside himself. He gabbled,
imploring Heywood. The young man nodded. "Yes, yes," he repeated
irritably, staring down at the body, but listening to the stream
of words.

Murmurs had risen, among the goblin faces blinking in the doorway.
Behind them, a sudden voice called out two words which were caught up
and echoed harshly in the street. Heywood whipped about.

"Never cal