ty and epaulettes and curly moustaches and
Grecian profiles in other men were never in my way. When people
first look at me they shudder. Unless they are in the last stages
of _angina pectoris_ they are mine in ten minutes after I begin to
talk. Women and men--I win 'em as they come. Now, you wouldn't think
women would fancy a man with a face like mine, would you?"

"Oh, yes, Mr. Tate," said I. "History is bright and fiction dull
with homely men who have charmed women. There seems--"

"Pardon me," interrupted Judson Tate, "but you don't quite
understand. You have yet to hear my story.

"Fergus McMahan was a friend of mine in the capital. For a handsome
man I'll admit he was the duty-free merchandise. He had blond curls
and laughing blue eyes and was featured regular. They said he was a
ringer for the statue they call Herr Mees, the god of speech and
eloquence resting in some museum at Rome. Some German anarchist, I
suppose. They are always resting and talking.

"But Fergus was no talker. He was brought up with the idea that
to be beautiful was to make good. His conversation was about as
edifying as listening to a leak dropping in a tin dish-pan at the
head of the bed when you want to go to sleep. But he and me got
to be friends--maybe because we was so opposite, don't you think?
Looking at the Hallowe'en mask that I call my face when I'm shaving
seemed to give Fergus pleasure; and I'm sure that whenever I heard
the feeble output of throat noises that he called conversation I
felt contented to be a gargoyle with a silver tongue.

"One time I found it necessary to go down to this coast town of
Oratama to straighten out a lot of political unrest and chop off a
few heads in the customs and military departments. Fergus, who owned
the ice and sulphur-match concessions of the republic, says he'll
keep me company.

"So, in a jangle of mule-train bells, we gallops into Oratama, and
the town belonged to us as much as Long Island Sound doesn't belong
to Japan when T. R. is at Oyster Bay. I say us; but I mean me.
Everybody for four nations, two oceans, one bay and isthmus, and
five archipelagoes around had heard of Judson Tate. Gentleman
adventurer, they called me. I had been written up in five columns of
the yellow journals, 40,000 words (with marginal decorations) in a
monthly magazine, and a stickful on the twelfth page of the New York
_Times_. If the beauty of Fergus McMahan gained any part of our
reception in Oratama,