face of a servant, as they passed into a small garden, of dwarf orange
trees pent in by a lofty, whitewashed wall.

"These grounds are yours, Hackh," said Heywood. "Your predecessor's boy;
and there"--pointing to a lonely barrack that loomed white over the
stunted grove--"there's your house. You draw the largest in the station.
A Portuguese nunnery, it was, built years ago. My boys are helping set
it to rights; but if you don't mind, I'd like you to stay on at my
beastly hut until this--this business takes a turn. Plenty of time." He
nodded at the fat little orange trees. "We may live to take our chow
under those yet, of an evening. Also a drink. Eh?"

The lantern skipped before them across the garden, through a penitential
courtyard, and under a vaulted way to the main door and the road. With
Rudolph, the obscure garden and echoing house left a sense of magical
ownership, sudden and fleeting, like riches in the Arabian Nights. The
road, leaving on the right a low hill, or convex field, that heaved
against the lower stars, now led the wanderers down a lane of hovels,
among dim squares of smoky lamplight.

Wu, their lantern-bearer, had turned back, and they had begun to pass a
few quiet, expectant shops, when a screaming voice, ahead, outraged the
evening stillness.

At the first words, Heywood doubled his pace.

"Come along. Here's a lark--or a tragedy."

Jostling through a malodorous crowd that blockaded the quarrel, they
gained the threshold of a lighted shop. Against a rank of orderly