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                          MY FRIEND PASQUALE

                           AND OTHER STORIES

                                  BY

                           JAMES SELWIN TAIT

                               AUTHOR OF
         “WHO IS THE MAN?” “THE NEAPOLITAN BANKER,” ETC., ETC.

                               NEW YORK
                         TAIT, SONS & COMPANY
                             UNION SQUARE

                          COPYRIGHT, 1892, BY
                            J. SELWIN TAIT

                        [_All rights reserved_]


                      TO THE DEAR MEMORY OF HER,
                      WHO FIRST INSPIRED MY PEN,
                        I DEDICATE THESE PAGES.




MY FRIEND PASQUALE.




CHAPTER I.


The events narrated in the following story happened a score and more of
years ago. They have never before been made public, and I make them
known now with pain and misgiving, but impelled by a sense of duty which
I can no longer disregard.

During their occurrence they changed the current of my life, once from
grave to gay, and then and finally, from gaiety to unspeakable gloom.
Although time has to some extent dulled the edge of my grief at the loss
of my friend Pasquale, his memory will remain with me while life lasts
as a cherished and sacred thing.

When the reader ends this simple narration this eulogy of the dead may
surprise and shock him, and, in reply and explanation, I have only to
say in advance that I pity him if the faithful, unvarnished record
leaves that impression on his mind--he did not know Pasquale.

       *       *       *       *       *

I was wending my way homeward from Hampstead Heath one Saturday
afternoon in the early summer time, when I found myself, on recovering
from a lengthened reverie, midway on the Old North Road at a point now
occupied by the Midland Railway Terminus at Saint Pancras.

My day’s work at the bank was finished and with it all the duties of the
week, and I felt that sense of relief and buoyancy which, perhaps, comes
to all, young and old alike, at the completion of tedious work honestly
performed.

I was still--at the period of which I write--a good deal of a
day-dreamer, living in a world of my own for many hours of the
twenty-four, and when the heavy bank doors clanged behind me, with all
business cares and anxieties doubly barred within the impregnable vault,
my mind would soar away from business thoughts as an imprisoned lark
leaps to freedom from its narrow cage.

The road I was traveling was not one which I would have taken
intentionally, but in my fit of absent-mindedness I had unconsciously
followed the trend of the highway with the result that I was committed
to one of the most uninviting thoroughfares in the city of London.

As a highway this road was but little used; it had already been secured
by the railway company, and with the exception of one public-house of
low character there were no dwellings fronting it, but only the wreck of
the torn down structures demolished to make way for the company’s
projected improvements; and this wreckage was walled, or penned in, by a
high and closely boarded fence running the full length of the road.

The Old North Road was nearly a mile in length between these wooden
walls, and it was a street to be shunned not only by females but by
solitary travelers of even the stronger sex, for it afforded no means of
escape from an unpleasant encounter.

When I had traveled about one third of its length my attention was
attracted to an excited group of men some three hundred yards distant.

These men I found, on nearing them, to be coal-heavers employed by the
railway company, and already a good deal exhilarated by their wages-day
libations.

They were broad-shouldered, powerful men--a collection of sooty
giants--and the sport which they were enjoying was an impromptu
dog-fight, an amusement entirely after their own heart.

As I approached the group on the one side, a young man of about my own
age neared it from the other, and we both stopped to ascertain the cause
of the excitement.

The sight of one dog apparently killing the other was to me a revolting
spectacle, and I was turning away in disgust when I saw the other
arrival elbow his way fiercely through the men and attempt to drag off
the dog which seemed to be gaining the victory; in doing which he
certainly risked his life.

“O, you great, black cowards!” he shouted, his voice ringing in the air
like a trumpet, “to allow two poor creatures to worry each other in such
a way!”

His movements were so sudden that he had actually grasped one of the
dogs before his intention could be frustrated, but as soon as he touched
the animal a burly coal-heaver seized him round the waist, and lifting
him high in air, carried him out of the crush into the middle of the
road, where he planted him on the ground and released his hold. Not
ill-naturedly altogether, but yet with a warning look in his grimy face
he placed his bulky body in front of the disturber of the fight, saying
as he did so, “Master, we are not molesting you, leave us alone, or----”
the threat in his eyes supplied the rest.

The stranger whose face was pale as death, and whose eyes literally
flamed with rage, said not a word, but, quick as lightning, his right
hand shot out and struck his opponent straight between the eyes. The
amazing fury of the blow, the skill with which it was given, and the
smallness of the hand which struck it, had, to some extent, the same
effect on the dense skull of the coal-heaver as the pole axe has on the
head of the ox. He fell, not backward, but forward, on his knees, as a
bullock falls when struck.

The group around the two dogs had given no more thought to the intruder
after their companion had removed him, but now one looked around and
seeing his friend on the ground and probably concluding that the
foreign-looking stranger had stabbed him, he rushed to secure the
intruder.

The latter, however, seemed possessed with an ungovernable fury and flew
at his new assailant as if he would rend him to pieces. Even a blow
from the ponderous fist, though it landed him three yards away flat on
his back in the dusty road, in nowise discouraged him. In a moment he
was on his feet flying like a tiger-cat at his antagonist’s throat, his
dark eyes gleaming anew with electric fire. In the midst of the _mêlée_
a hansom cab drove up, and the driver stopped to witness the double
event.

Others of the group now gathered around, and I feared, not for the
safety of the stranger’s limbs, but for his life. It was an “ugly” group
for any single man to attack. These men, although easygoing enough up to
a certain point, were incarnate fiends when roused, and they were
