Home Restaurant' over its door in big
letters, and as I was nearing him, I saw him suddenly throw up his
head and spring forward. At the same moment I noted a man--hatless,
coatless, and wearing upon his waistcoat the badge which indicated his
position as 'head waiter'--come running from the direction of the Home
Restaurant, pointing as he ran, breathlessly, toward a man and woman
who were walking rather briskly eastward.

As the guard came opposite this couple I saw him halt just a
perceptible instant, his eye upon the hurrying waiter; then he stepped
quickly before the coming couple and made a courteous but positive
gesture, clearly an order to halt. The man did not halt, but brushed
past the polite guard with a scowling face. He was a big fellow,
flashily dressed, and with a countenance at once coarse and
dissipated; and as he made a second forward movement I could
distinctly see his hand drop, with a significant gesture, toward his
right hip.

'Stop him!' cried the almost breathless head-waiter. 'A beat.'

At the word the woman made a little forward spring, and the man made a
movement to follow.

'Halt!' commanded the guard, at the same time clapping a hand upon the
man's shoulder, and then----

It was only the work of a moment.

There was a quick movement on the man's part, and I saw the butt of a
big revolver, and called out in warning: 'Take care!' I might have
saved my breath. The tall guard stood moveless until the weapon was
actually in sight, and then the arm in the blue coat shot out, strong,
swift, straight from the shoulder, and the pistol-arm dropped, the
weapon fell to the ground, and the man staggered back, to be received
in the unwilling arms of the head-waiter, to struggle there for a
moment, and then to submit, quite as much to the fire in the young
guard's eye as to the strength of his arm. The woman at the first sign
of struggle had drawn away from her companion, slipped into the crowd
about them, and was making off in haste, when I said, addressing the
waiter:

'Must she be stopped?'

The fellow shook his head. 'Let her go,' he said; 'they were dodging
their breakfast-bill.'

It was the common trick of a common sharper. Having ordered and eaten
a late breakfast, they had called for something additional, and in the
absence of the waiter had left their places near the door and slipped
away.

It was over in a moment. The man, forced into honesty by strength
superior to his own, sulkil