Mazaro, whose small, restless eyes were as black and bright as those of
a mouse, whose light talk became his dark girlish face, and whose
redundant locks curled so prettily and so wonderfully black under the
fine white brim of his jaunty Panama. He had the hands of a woman, save
that the nails were stained with the smoke of cigarettes. He could play
the guitar delightfully, and wore his knife down behind his coat-collar.

The second was "Major" Galahad Shaughnessy. I imagine I can see him, in
his white duck, brass-buttoned roundabout, with his sabreless belt
peeping out beneath, all his boyishness in his sea-blue eyes, leaning
lightly against the door-post of the Café des Exilés as a child leans
against his mother, running his fingers over a basketful of fragrant
limes, and watching his chance to strike some solemn Creole under the
fifth rib with a good old Irish joke.

Old D'Hemecourt drew him close to his bosom. The Spanish Creoles were,
as the old man termed it, both cold and hot, but never warm. Major
Shaughnessy was warm, and it was no uncommon thing to find those two
apart from the others, talking in an undertone, and playing at
confidantes like two schoolgirls. The kind old man was at this time
drifting close up to his sixtieth year. There was much he could tell of
San Domingo, whither he had been carried from Martinique in his
childhood, whence he had become a refugee to Cuba, and thence to New
Orleans in the flight of 1809.

It fell one day to Manuel Mazaro's lot to discover, by sauntering within
earshot, that to Galahad Shaughnessy only, of all the children of the
Café des Exilés, the good host spoke long and confidentially concerning
his daughter. The words, half heard and magnified like objects seem in a
fog, meaning Manuel Mazaro knew not what, but made portentous by his