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 princess abducted in some savage foray. It was not the lack of convention which shocked Giles's sense of propriety, it was the presence of any convention at all.

Dessalines was brooding dejectedly when Giles, embarrassed and a trifle uncomfortable, interrupted.

"But about that matter in New York, Aristide; what happened to you?"

"Ah, yes; I was about to tell you. I had come from Hayti with these ideas, and there was nothing in my treatment on the voyage to New York to prepare me for what was to follow. On landing I took a cab and told the driver to go to the Windsor Hotel. Even at that time my English was fairly good, for as a child I had been cared for by a woman from Jamaica who taught me the language—" Dessalines arose suddenly, threw out both great arms, clinched his fists, and strode across the pagoda; and when he turned, with the body sling of a caged tiger, Giles shrank back instinctively. The wide nostrils were distended, the thick lips drawn back in a grimace which bared the white teeth, the low forehead was corrugated; but most appalling of all was the sinister looming of the whole great figure, the poise of the head downward and forward, the elbow-bent hang of the long arms.

"Tonnerre les écrase!" thundered the tremendous voice. And then, as the rolling eyes, the whites of which were most conspicuous, fell upon Giles there was a change, almost as startling as the first. Something in the blank expression of the ruddy-faced Englishman, an imbecile expression of astonished dismay, a drop to the jaw, the startled stare of the eyes, pulled quickly at the hair trigger of the negro risibilities. The savagery was 134