Page:Love Insurance - Earl Biggers (1914).djvu/101

80 "Come for a stroll," Paddock suggested. "I presume you want the giddy story of my life I promised you yesterday? Been down to the old Spanish fort yet? No? Come ahead, and there on the ramparts I'll impart."

They went down the narrow and very modern street of the souvenir venders. Suddenly the street ended, and they walked again in the past. The remnants of the old city gates restored, loomed in the sunlight. They stepped through the portals, and Minot gave a gasp.

There in the quiet morning stood the great gray fort that the early settlers had built to protect themselves from the gay dogs who roamed the seas. Its massive walls spoke clearly of romance, of bloody days of cutlass and spike, of bandaged heads and ready arms. Such things still stood! Still stood in the United States—land of steam radiators and men who marched in suffrage parades!

The old caretaker let them in, and they went up the stone steps to stand at last on the parapet looking down on the shimmering sea. To Minot, fresh from Broadway, it all seemed like a