Glinka fired the last bullet more wildly still, hurled the Malacca cane at them, and ran.

Abdul Hakkim ben Salazar, who had been many leaps ahead of him, arrived breathless at the front gate of the villa, opened it, dived through, locked it behind him, and threw himself upon the grass to catch his breath.

There was a cheerful glow in the darkness. The slight, grotesque figure of Dr. Stefanik and his pipe emerged from the shadows.

"Ah," Abdul breathed, "where were you, Sidi, when I was out there dying for you?"

"Hiding up the tallest cinnamon tree, like a monkey," Dr. Stefanik said.

They sat there upon the grass for a long while in companionable silence, heeding the sounds of the night, which was balmy and infinitely peaceful.

There came a high-pitched, long-drawn-out scream from somewhere on the ridge.

"They got him," Abdul said.

"And now they will pluck him, I suppose," said Dr. Stefanik. "There, by the way, is a thing that even I have never completely understood about them. Their insatiable curiosity, of course, is a vestigial trait that will pass, but this other drive, I fear, this rather alarming passion that they have shown for the up-breeding of the species may be some universal of life itself that no man may touch or alter."

Down the path from the ridge, a small, white-robed figure came running, far ahead of the others, bent upon her own schemes of evolution.

Abdul crouched lower in the shadows. "That one makes even the heart of a man swell within his breast," he whispered, "for she does not ever give up."

"That no man may touch," Dr. Stefanik repeated, and nodded his shaggy head wisely. "As an idealist, I may have given them shoes and enlightenment, but I did not give them this, and so they are not altogether mine. His kind still professes to believe in the common denominator and the common level, seeking to drag down the few from their gilt palaces and haul up the masses from the muck. Tell me, as a Hadj who is, at the same time, undoubtedly vermin-ridden, do you believe in the equality of men—or can you honestly wish it?"

"All of us to be Effendis?"

"Something like that."

Abdul Hakkim ben Salazar thought about it for a time with furrowed brow. "No, Sidi," he said at last, "for then there would be no one to chase us."

The female stopped, knelt in the path.

"What is she doing now?" Dr. Stefanik asked.

"She is taking off her shoes, in order to run faster than me."

"'... And cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind'! And yet you told Glinka I made them!"

"Ah, but not out of what, Sidi," Abdul said.

The female, with a hopeful little bleat, arose and tucked her shoes under her arm, for youth is hope and kids will be kids, and off she went, clip-clop, clip-clop, down the rocky path to the sea.