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“Aren’t—aren’t you afraid of him?” stammered Gwendolyn, in a whisper.

“Afraid?” he echoed, surprised. “Why, no! Are you?“

Somehow, she felt ashamed. “N-n-not very,” she faltered.

No sooner did she partly deny her fear than she experienced a most delicious feeling of security! And this feeling grew as she watched the nearing Policeman. For she saw that he was in a mournful state.

It was worry and grief that distorted his face. The dark eyes above the visor (both the black eye and the other one) were streaming with tears, tears which, naturally enough, ran from the four corners of his eyes, down across his forehead, and on into his hair. And it was evident that he had been weeping for a long time, for his cap was full!

And now she realized that the hoarse cries which had filled her with terror were the saddest of complaints!—were not “Hoo! hoo!” but “Boo! hoo!”

“Poor man!” sympathized the little old gentleman, wagging his beard.

Jane, however, with characteristic lack of compassion, hopped about, tee-heeing loudly—and straightening out any number of wrinkles. “Oh, ain’t he a sight!” she chortled. She had entirely given over her threatening.

Gwendolyn now felt secure enough. But she did not feel like laughing. She was sober to the point of pitying. For though he looked ridiculous, he was so absolutely helpless, so utterly unhappy.

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” he exclaimed as he came on—hand over hand, legs held together, and swaying from side to side rhythmically, like the pendulum of the metronome. “What shall I do! What shall I do!”

“Need any sharpening?” called out the Man-Who-Makes-Faces, brandishing the curved knife. “Is there something wrong?”

“Wrong!” echoed the Policeman dolefully. “I should say so! Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” And still weeping copiously, so that his forehead glistened with his tears, he plodded across the border of the Face-Shop.

It was then that Gwendolyn recalled under what circumstances she had seen him last. Only two or three days before, when bound homeward in the limousine, she had spied him loitering beside the walled walk. “What makes his club shine so?” she had asked Jane, whispering. “Eh?” whispered Jane in return; “what else than blood?” The wind was blowing as the automobile swept past him: The breeze lifted the tail of his belted coat. And for one terrifying instant Gwendolyn caught a glimpse of steel!

“And if he don’t mean harm to anybody,” Jane had added when Gwendolyn turned scared eyes to her, “why does he carry a pistol?“

But there was no need to fear a weapon now. The falling away of his coat-tails had uncovered his trouser-pockets. And as he halted, Gwendolyn saw that his revolver was gone, his pistol-pocket empty.

She took a timid step toward him. “How do you do, Mr. Officer,” she said. “Can’t you let your feet come down? Then you’d be on your back, and you could get up the right way.”

Up came his face between his coat-tails. He stared at her with his new black eye—with the other one, too. (She noted that it was blue.) “But I am up the right way,” he answered, “Oh, no! It isn’t that! It isn’t that!” His hands were encased in white cotton gloves. He rocked himself from one to the other.

“No, it isn’t that,” agreed the little old gentleman; “but I firmly believe that, you’d feel better if you’d order another eye.”

“Another eye!” said the Policeman, bitterly. “Would another eye help me to find him?”

“Oh, I see.” The Man-Who-Makes-Faces spoke with some concern. “Then he’s flown?”

Gwendolyn, puzzled, glanced from one to the other. “Who is ‘he’?” she asked.

The Policeman bumped his head against his night-stick. “The Bird!” he mourned.

At that, Jane hopped up and down in evident delight.

But Gwendolyn fell back, taking up a position beside the little old gentleman. That Bird again! And it was evident that the Policeman thought well of him!

Pity swiftly merged into suspicion.

“I s’pose you mean the Bird that tells people things,” she ventured—to be sure that she was not misjudging him.

He wiped his black eye on a coat-tail. “Aye,” he answered. “That’s the one. And, oh, but he could tell you things!”

Gwendolyn considered the statement. At last, “He’s a tattletale!” she charged, and felt her cheeks crimson with sudden anger.

He nodded—so vigorously that some of his tears splashed over the rim of his cap. “That’s why the Police can’t get along without him,” he declared. “And, oh, here I’ve gone and lost him! And They’ll put me off the Force!” (Bump! bump! bump!)