“It is sometimes said, 'Follow your nose and it will take you out of danger,' and in my case the proverb proved true. Sometimes, when I sit here alone, half sleepily watching the curling smoke wreaths, I can almost see the place again, and the rings of smoke shape themselves into a horde of convict demons killing the poor old noble senor, whose elder daughter I have married. And now you know what I owe to the pungent aroma of a cigarette from Carcinto.” ANTAEUS, By Frank M. Bicknell [Illustration: 0199] [Illustration: 9200] ATE one night, after having been a week out of town, I was returning home by a short cut across fields, when, on coming upon the street again, I found my path barred by a huge, hulking fellow, whose unexpected appearance startled me not a little. This was my introduction to Antaeus, whose better acquaintance I was to make later under rather peculiar circumstances. Antaeus was not a highway robber, but a highway roller, and when he first confronted me he was drawn up beside the road, enjoying an elephantine slumber after his hard day's labor--being, despite his formidable aspect, quiescent and inoffensive. I am not sure that it is usual to confer upon steam-rollers the dignity of a name, but my friend had one, and I read it on the neat, black-lettered brass plate affixed to the side of his boiler, near the smoke-stack. This, I take it, was the nearest practicable approach to hanging a locket about his neck that could be managed, and I have always felt grateful to his unknown sponsors for their little act of consideration. I cannot think of Antaeus otherwise than as a creature--not simply as a creation--as a reasoning and responsible being, rather than as a docile, slavish piece of mechanism; but to the unimaginative he seemed to be under the domination of a tolerably clean specimen of humanity whom I shall call the Driver. It was nearly a fortnight after our first meeting when I next saw Antaeus, for he was occupied in parts of the town remote from that in which I lived. I heard him occasionally, however, as he passed through the neighborhood after dark, _en route_ for another field of labor, or propelling his weary weight toward the shed under which he was lodged for his Sunday's rest. On such occasions, when I heard him lumbering by, I used to fancy he was taking an after-supper promenade and puffing a meditative cigar as he went along. At length, after he had come several times for pleasure, or his own convenience, he made us a professional call and buckled down to work at repairing a strip of street which had long stood in need! of his services. Antaeus was with us for several weeks and during his stay I became, in a measure, “chummy” with the Driver, from whom I learned various interesting facts about my muscular friend.