On the same busy night when the _Lileth_ flashed her red signal and Miss Gabrielle Rose arrived with a package of letters that screamed for a Cotrell, two strangers invaded San Marco by means of the eight-nineteen freight south. Frayed, fatigued and famished as they were, it would hardly have been kind to study them as they strolled up San Sebastian Avenue toward the plaza. But had you been so unkind, you would never have guessed that frequently, in various corners of the little round globe, they had known prosperity, the weekly pay envelope, and the buyer's crook of the finger summoning a waiter. One of the strangers was short, with flaming red hair and in his eye the twinkle without which the collected works of Bernard Shaw are as sounding brass. He twinkled about him as he walked--at the bright lights and spurious gaiety under the spell of which San Marco sought to forget the rates per day with bath. "The French," he mused, "are a volatile people, fond of light wines and dancing. So, it would seem, are the inhabitants of San Marco. White flannels, Harry, white flannels. They should encase that leaning tower of Pisa you call your manly form." The other--long, cadaverous, immersed in a gentle melancholy--groaned. "Another tourist hothouse! Packed with innocents abroad, and everybody bleeding 'em but us. Everything here but a real home, with chintz table-covers and a cold roast of beef in the ice-chest. What are we doing here? We should have gone north." "Ah, Harry, chide me no more," pleaded the little man. "I was weak, I know, but all the freights seemed to be coming south, and I have always longed for a winter amid the sunshine and flowers. Look at this fat old duffer coming! Alms! For the love of Allah, alms!" "Shut up," growled the thin one. "Save your breath till we stand hat in hand in the office of the local newspaper. A job! Two jobs! Good lord, there aren't two newspaper jobs in the entire South. Well--we can only be kicked out into the night again. And perhaps staked to a meal, in the name of the guild in which we have served so long and liquidly." "Some day," said the short man dreamily, "when I am back in the haunts of civilization again, I am going to start something. A Society for Melting the Stone Hearts of Editors. Motto: 'Have a heart--have a heart!' Emblem, a roast beef sandwich rampant, on a cloth of linen. Ah, well--the day will come." They halted in the plaza. In the round stone tub provided, the town alligator dozed. Above him hung a warning sign: "Do not feed or otherwise annoy the alligator." The short man read, and drew back with a tragic groan. "Feed or otherwise annoy!" he cried. "Heavens, Harry, is that the way they look at it here? This is no place for us. We'd better be moving on to the next town." But the lean stranger gave no heed. Instead he stepped over and entered into earnest converse with a citizen of San Marco. In a moment he returned to his companion's side.