himself on
the dark and chilly stairs without so much as a pillow or a blanket
to make sleep possible. For lack of anything else in the shape of a
weapon, he had brought his silver-keyed flute with him; if he were
invaded in the small hours it might serve him again; it seemed to
have a virtue for quelling police officials.

About three o'clock in the morning he awoke from an uneasy doze,
chilled to the marrow, and was prompted to try if the flute would
still make music. It would not. It is too much to ask of any
instrument that has been used as an instrument of war. It had saved a
Jewess and her child, magnified its owner into a man of action, and
was thenceforth silent for ever.

"I must have hit that officer pretty hard," was the reflection of
Robert Lucas.

The episode closed shortly before noon next day, when two elderly men
of affairs came to fetch his guests away. They entered the room while
he was entertaining the baby with a whistled selection from his
repertoire of flute music, and he broke off short as they regarded
him from the doorway. The Jewess looked up alertly as they entered.

They bowed to Lucas with a manner of servility in which there was an
ironic suggestion, while their eyes examined him shrewdly. They were
bearded, aquiline persons, soft-spoken and withal formidable. He had
a notion that they found him amusing, but suppressed their amusement.

"Then it is you we have to thank," said the elder of them, when
formal greetings had been exchanged, "for the safety of this girl and
her child."

"I don't want any thanks," protested Lucas.

He could not tell them how the thanks he had already received
transcended any words they could speak.

"It was a villainous thing," he went on. "I'm glad I could help. Er--
is the silversmith all, right?"

"Money was paid," answered the grey-haired Jew; "he is safe,
therefore. But he spent the night in chains, while his wife was here
with you."

He spoke with a pregnant gravity. The Jewess started up and addressed
him in a tongue Lucas could not understand. He saw that she pointed
to him and to the bedroom and to the stairs, and that she spoke with
heat. The old Jew heard her intently.

"So!" he said, in his deep voice. "Then we have more to thank you for
than we thought. You gave up your rooms, it seems?"

"It is nothing," said Lucas. "You see, a lady--well, I could hardly--"

"Yes, I see," agreed the old Jew. "I have to do with a noble spirit.
And y