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 tragic event which caused Pollyooly to lag behind; and she was not more than five yards away from them when, a few feet from the fountain, Hilary Vance tapped Señor Perez on the shoulder, and in the hissing tones of melodrama informed him that the time had come for an infernal foreigner to cease persecuting an English star.

With infinite swiftness and presence of mind Señor Perez smacked Hilary Vance's face. With a roar Hilary Vance closed with him, and rapt him from the earth, or rather, to be exact, from the pavement. At the roar the Esmeralda turned, but the Honorable John Ruffin's arm went round her, and he drew her quickly across the Square.

Hilary Vance with long strides bore Señor Perez, struggling violently and expostulating in shrieks of the most idiomatic Montevidean, to the basin of the fountain. Then it would have been both more fitting and more decorous that he should have dropped him into it without falling into it himself; but that was not how it happened. They both fell into the basin together with a magnificent splash—so glorious a splash that Pollyooly shrieked with joy.