“About the--accident or whatever it was that caused your lameness. But if it worries you----” “The accident? Oh, the smashing! Yes; only it wasn't an accident, it was a poker.” She stared at him in blank amazement. He pushed back his hair with a hand that shook perceptibly, and looked up at her, smiling. “Won't you sit down? Bring your chair close, please. I'm so sorry I can't get it for you. R-really, now I come to think of it, the case would have been a p-perfect t-treasure-trove for Riccardo if he had had me to treat; he has the true surgeon's love for broken bones, and I believe everything in me that was breakable was broken on that occasion--except my neck.” “And your courage,” she put in softly. “But perhaps you count that among your unbreakable possessions.” He shook his head. “No,” he said; “my courage has been mended up after a fashion, with the rest of me; but it was fairly broken then, like a smashed tea-cup; that's the horrible part of it. Ah---- Yes; well, I was telling you about the poker. “It was--let me see--nearly thirteen years ago, in Lima. I told you Peru was a delightful country to live in; but it's not quite so nice for people that happen to be at low water, as I was. I had been down in the Argentine, and then in Chili, tramping the country and starving, mostly; and had come up from Valparaiso as odd-man on a cattle-boat. I couldn't get any work in Lima itself, so I went down to the docks,--they're at Callao, you know,--to try there. Well of course in all those shipping-ports there are low quarters where the sea-faring people congregate; and after some time I got taken on as servant in one of the gambling hells there. I had to do the cooking and billiard-marking, and fetch drink for the sailors and their women, and all that sort of thing. Not very pleasant work; still I was glad to get it; there was at least food and the sight of human faces and sound of human tongues--of a kind. You may think that was no advantage; but I had just been down with yellow fever, alone in the outhouse of a wretched half-caste shanty, and the thing had given me the horrors. Well, one night I was told to put out a tipsy Lascar who was making himself obnoxious; he had come ashore and lost all his money and was in a bad temper. Of course I had to obey if I didn't want to lose my place and starve; but the man was twice as strong as I--I was not twenty-one and as weak as a cat after the fever. Besides, he had the poker.” He paused a moment, glancing furtively at her; then went on: “Apparently he intended to put an end to me altogether; but somehow he managed to scamp his work--Lascars always do if they have a chance; and left just enough of me not smashed to go on living with.” “Yes, but the other people, could they not interfere? Were they all afraid of one Lascar?” He looked up and burst out laughing.