“‘I have not found such faith,—­no, not in Israel!’” quoted Brice, a new note in his voice which somehow stirred the embarrassed girl’s heart.  “You have only my bare word that I’m not a panhandler or a crook.  And yet you believe in me enough to—­”

“You will let me?” she urged, eagerly.  “Say you will!  Say it.”

“I’ll make cleaner use of your faith,” he returned, “by asking you to say a good word for me to your brother, if ever I come back here looking for a job.  No, no!” he broke off, fiercely, before she could answer.  “I don’t mean that.  You must do nothing of the kind.  Forget I asked it.”

With which amazing outburst, he turned on his heel, ran across the lawn, leaped the low privet hedge which divided it from the coral road, and made off at a swinging pace in the direction of Coconut Grove and Miami.

“What a fool—­and what a cur—­a man can make of himself,” he muttered disgustedly as he strode along, without daring to look back at the wondering little white-clad figure, watching him out of sight around the bend, “when he gets to talking with a woman—­a woman with—­with eyes like hers!  They—­why, they make me feel as if I was in church!  What sort of bungling novice am I, anyhow, for work like this?”

With a grunt of self-contempt, he drove his hands deep into the pockets of his shabby trousers and quickened his pace.  His fingers closed mechanically around a roll of bills, of very respectable size, in the depths of his right-hand pocket.  The gesture caused a litter of small change to give forth a muffled jingle.  A sense of shame crept over the man, at the contact.

“She wanted to lend me money!” he muttered, half-aloud.  “Money!  Not give it to me, as a beggar, but to lend it to me....  Her nose has the funniest little tilt to it!  And she can’t be an inch over five feet tall! ...  I’m a wall-eyed idiot!”

He stood aside to let two cars pass him, one going in either direction.  The lamps of the car from the west, traveling east, showed him for a moment the occupant of the car that was moving westward.  The brief ray shone upon a pair of shoulders as wide as a steam radiator.  They were clad in loose-fitting white silk.  Above them a thick golden beard caught the ray of shifting light.  Then, both cars had passed on, and Brice was resuming his trudge.

“Milo Standish!” he mused, looking back at the car as it vanished in a cloudlet of white coral-dust.  “Milo Standish! ...  As big as two elephants ....  ’The bigger they are, the harder they fall.’”

The road curved, from the Standish estate, in almost a “C” formation, before straightening out, a mile to the north, into the main highway.  Gavin Brice had just reached the end of the “C” when there was a scurrying sound behind him, in a grapefruit grove to his right.  Something light and agile scrambled over the low coral-block wall, and flung itself rapturously on him.