n attack at close range. To carry the fortress with
one concentrated, ardent, eloquent, irresistible _escalade_--that was
Dicky's way.

Pasa was descended from the proudest Spanish families in the country.
Moreover, she had had unusual advantages. Two years in a New Orleans
school had elevated her ambitions and fitted her for a fate above the
ordinary maidens of her native land. And yet here she succumbed to
the first red-haired scamp with a glib tongue and a charming smile
that came along and courted her properly.

Very soon Dicky took her to the little church on the corner of the
plaza, and "Mrs. Maloney" was added to her string of distinguished
names.

And it was her fate to sit, with her patient, saintly eyes and figure
like a bisque Psyche, behind the sequestered counter of the little
shop, while Dicky drank and philandered with his frivolous
acquaintances.

The women, with their naturally fine instinct, saw a chance for
vivisection, and delicately taunted her with his habits. She turned
upon them in a beautiful, steady blaze of sorrowful contempt.

"You meat-cows," she said, in her level, crystal-clear tones; "you
know nothing of a man. Your men are _maromeros_. They are fit only to
roll cigarettes in the shade until the sun strikes and shrivels them
up. They drone in your hammocks and you comb their hair and feed
them with fresh fruit. My man is of no such blood. Let him drink of
the wine. When he has taken sufficient of it to drown one of your
_flaccitos_ he will come home to me more of a man than one thousand
of your _pobrecitos_. _My_ hair he smooths and braids; to me he
sings; he himself removes my _zapatos_, and there, there, upon each
instep leaves a kiss. He holds-- Oh, you will never understand! Blind
ones who have never known a _man_."

Sometimes mysterious things happened at night about Dicky's shop.
While the front of it was dark, in the little room back of it Dicky
and a few of his friends would sit about a table carrying on some
kind of very quiet _negocios_ until quite late. Finally he would let
them out the front door very carefully, and go upstairs to his little
saint. These visitors were generally conspirator-like men with dark
clothes and hats. Of course, these dark doings were noticed after a
while, and talked about.

Dicky seemed to care nothing at all for the society of the alien
residents of the town. He avoided Goodwin, and his skilful escape
from the trepanning story of Dr. Gregg