ing out his sheaf of tickets. He was offering coupons on the National Spanish Lottery, an institution which circulates its chances all over South America, including even insurgent Rio Negro.
The good fairy who was offering this chance of fortune was a ragged man whose lean ribs and belly could be seen through the rents in his clothes. The American paused, took the sheaf, and looked at the tickets curiously. Each ticket was a long strip of small coupons which could be torn into ten pieces and divided among indigent buyers. They were vilely printed on the cheapest of paper.
Strawbridge stood looking at the tickets and shaking his head. Life, he told the ticket-seller, was what a man made it, and he could not afford to mix up his solid success with lottery chances and such like. "What he wanted was certainties, and not moonshine. Here he handed back the sheaf and moved on briskly through the plaza, a big, well-tailored American, the ensample of a man who had taken his life in his own hands and molded it into a warm and shining success. The vender stared emptily after the drummer. Never before had his hope of a sale inflated so suddenly, or collapsed so completely.
Strawbridge had gone only a little way when a man came running out of a bodega that was down a side street. He was waving his sombrero and calling Strawbridge's name. The American stood in doubt whether he had heard aright, for no one in Canalejos knew his name, and then he saw a wad of hair on the shouter's head and recognized the bull-fighter. Lubito came up quickly and somewhat unsteadily. His face was flushed, his black eyes glistened with alcohol, and his bullfighter's pigtail was somewhat awry.
"I was just starting to the palacio to see you, señor," he began a little thickly. "I was just starting when my compadre in the bodega says, 'There goes the Americano now,' so out I came."
