at
thieves... and there were children, too--the place was the city
orphanage. For the fifth part of a second my advent made no difference.
Then, at the far end, one of the men in black and white separated
himself, and came swiftly to me across the sunny _patio_. The others
followed slowly, with pea-fowl steps, their women hanging to them
and whispering. The bundles of rags rose up towards me; others slunk
furtively out of the barred dens. The man who was approaching had the
head of a Julius Caesar of fifty, for all the world as if he had stolen a
bust and endowed it with yellow skin and stubby gray and silver hair.
He saluted me with intense gravity and an imperial glance of yellow
eyes along a hooked nose. His linen was the most spotless broidered and
embossed stuff; irom the crimson scarf round his waist protruded the
shagreen and silver handle of a long dagger. He said:

"Senor, I have the honour to salute you. I am Crisostomo Garcia. I ask
the courtesy of your trousers."

I did not answer him. I did not see what he wanted with my trousers,
which weren't anyway as valuable as his own. The others were closing
in on me like a solid wall. I leant back against the gate; I was not
frightened, but I was mightily excited. The man like Caesar looked
fiercely at me, swayed a long way back on his haunches, and imperiously
motioned the crowd to recede.

"Senor Inglesito," he said, "the gift I have the honour to ask of you is
the price of my protection. Without it these, my brothers, will tear you
limb from limb, there will nothing of you remain."

His brothers set up a stealthy, sinister growl, that went round among
the heads like the mutter of an obscene echo among the mountain-tops. I
wondered whether this, perhaps, was the man who, O'Brien said, would
put a knife in my back. I hadn't any knife; I might knock the fellow's
teeth down his throat, though.

The _alcayde_ thrust his immense hat, blood-red face, and long, ragged,
silver locks out of the little door. His features were convulsed with
indignation. He had been whispering with the Civil Guard.

"Are you mad, gentlemen?" he said. "Do you wish to visit hell before
your times? Do you know who the senor is? Did you ever hear of Carlos el
Demonio? This is the _Inglesito_ of Rio Medio!"

It was plain that my deeds, such as they were, reported by O'Brien
spies, by the _Lugarenos_, by all sorts of credulous gossipers, had got
me the devil of a reputation in the _patio_