constantly his eyes reverted to the cases before him. Slowly his
features relaxed and with a broken sigh he was about to replace the book
when a small photograph card fell from its pages; the face was that of
Robert Adams, the book Priscilla's "Common Prayer." Like a flash the old
lines came back in his forehead; he went to the case and opening the
glass doors, carefully took down a small, silver sheath, the work of
some artist of Goa, wherein the influence of both India and Europe
showed in the execution. The pressure of a button pushed out a grooved
dagger which fitted so low in the sheath as to show only the head of its
jeweled hilt. Dom Pedro removed the dagger, wrapped it in his
handkerchief and then putting it in his breast pocket replaced the empty
sheath in its old position.


III.

The government of Macao derives its greatest revenue from the licensing
of gambling houses, and these form one of the principal attractions in
the city to the European from Hong Kong as well as the native
Portuguese and Chinese. Whatever fault the visitor finds, on moral
grounds, with these houses he must admit the fact that they are quiet
and orderly, while the picturesqueness of the life within them and that
peculiar glamour which varnishes all that pertains to a great gambling
hall where fortune shows herself directly face to face with us, has a
charm which hides the immorality from even the most straight-laced
Puritan.

One of these houses was the favourite and nightly resort of Dom Pedro,
where he played high or low according to the state of his finances at
the moment. Dom Amaral, though himself a devotee of the fan-tan table,