The youth grinned a little sheepishly, and Barbara made room for him on the seat beside her.

“He will answer for your safety,” continued the legless man, “with his ears.  Where to?”

She gave the number of the house at which she was to dine, and the legless man repeated it to the driver.

“Good-night, Mr. Blizzard, and thank you.”

“Good-night, Miss Ferris, and welcome.”

The legless man watched the taxicab until it had rounded the corner of Marrow Lane.  Then he looked upward at the stars for a while.  Then he swung slowly and wearily back into his rookery, and having extinguished the light, sat for a long time in the dark.

What was it that had come over the man to let his victim escape when she was so mercilessly in his power?  Ask the stars to which he turned.  Ask the darkness in which he sits, alone, thinking.  Better, perhaps, ask the man’s warped and tormented soul.

[Illustration:  He turned with one foot on the sidewalk, and one in the cab....  “Here I wishes you salutations ...”]

It seems that while he sat in his office waiting for her, a champion rose up to defend her, a champion in his own heart.  A champion who made such headway against the brute’s lawless and beastly intention as to overthrow it.

Blizzard was in the power of that which all his mature life he had feared more than hanging or the electric chair, more even than prisons.  He had fallen quietly, even gently, in love.

“I’m not going to ask you any questions,” said Barbara, “because I don’t think of any.  But if you like to talk, please do.”

Without comment or preamble the youth who was to answer for her safety with his ears, began to talk.

“Might have knocked me over with a feather,” he said, “to find a lady like you sitting in a cab in front o’ Blizzard’s place.  At first look I says to myself:  ‘One o’ these high-fliers I’ve heard talk about that likes to fly low.’  Then I flings your eyes one penetrating peep, and says to myself:  ‘’Spect she ain’t one o’ that kind.’  And I make out just this about you that you’re O.K. from A to Xylophone, and I takes this opportunity to remark aloud to myself that I don’t know what your game is, and it’s none o’ my haterogeneous business, but if I was you I’d cut Marrow Lane out o’ my itenerary, and stay home nights playin’ a quiet rubber o’ tiddle winks-the-barber.”

Barbara laughed gayly.  “Everybody,” she said, “thinks that my friend, Mr. Blizzard, is a very bad man.  But he does nothing to prove it.  He has been very considerate of me in every way.”

“Did I say anything against Blizzard?  You’ll tell him I did?  Not you.  And I did not.  If it wasn’t for him, I says, Marrow Lane would be hell’s kitchen, and on the chanct that he ain’t always going to be on the spot, nor me, cut it out, I says.  But,” continued the talkative youth, “in case you don’t cut it out, in case you’re ever in trouble down our way you take this,” bluntly he handed her a small, dark metal whistle, “and blow her good.  I knows the note, and if my ears is on the job, you gets help.  You gets it sudden.  You gets it good.  And here, without fear or comment, I leaves you.”