anybody for a few minutes, and a place to lean against, these
were content. Troubadour phrases droned soothingly in his brain. Of
course he had to apostrophize the snow-clads:

"Popo, out there, grand, towering, whose frosty nose sniffs the vault of
heaven, whose mantle of fleecy cloud wraps him as the hoary locks of a
giant, whose--Sho', if I had some copy paper now, I'd get you fixed
_right_, you slippery old codger!"

The wisp of straw hardly tallied with poesy of soul, nor did the lank
figure and lean face, nor the cavalry uniform, badly worn, though lately
new, nor yet the sagging belt with dragoon pistols. But the eyes did.
Those eyes held the eloquence of the youth of a race. They were gentle,
or they flashed, according to what passed within. It did not matter
necessarily what might be going on without. They would as likely dart
sparks during prayer meeting, or soften as a lover's mid the charge on a
battery. Shaggy moustached Daniel, not yet thirty, was a scholar too, of
the true old school, where dead languages lived to consort familiarly
with men, and neither had to be buried out of the world because of the
comradeship. Once, in Pompeii, Daniel blundered suddenly on that mosaic
doormat which bears the warning, "Cave canem"; and before he thought, he
glanced anxiously around, half expecting a dog that could have barked at
Saint Peter himself. From which it appears that the editor had traveled,
and it would not be long in also appearing that he had gathered enough
of polite and variegated learning to fill a warehouse, in which
junk-shop he was constantly rummaging, and bringing forth queer
specimens of speech wherewith to flower his inspirations.

Streaming back and forth before the shops in lively Plateros street were
elegance and fashion and display, the languishing beauty of Spain, the
brilliancy of the Second Empire, the Teuton's martial strutting, the
Mexican's elation that Europe had come to him and with the money to pay
for it. The toughened Boone gazed on the bright morning parade of
ravishing shoppers and ogling cavaliers with the unterrified innocence
of a child, or of an American. He had the air of doing nothing, such as
only a newspaper man can have when really at work. He did not look as
though he were waiting for some one. But only a half-hour before he had
gotten from the saddle. He had just ridden four hundred and fifty miles
for the express purpose of waiting for someone now.

Finally the kee