His song died out in a wheezy gurgle and, for a moment, he was stunned. Then, suddenly, he realized that he had been insulted. Ysabel Sixty, the beautiful maiden who had captured his young fancy, had deliberately thrown—— But his thoughts were interrupted by a voice from the window—a voice that certainly was not Miss Sixty's.
"Bah Jove! I'll throw the pitcher at you, fellow, if you don't clear out!"
Carl was dazed. He knew, then, that he had made a mistake. While he stood there, half drowned and trying to find his voice, the bark of an approaching dog came from the rear of the house.
Self-preservation is the first law of nature, and it flashed over Carl on the instant that if he wanted to save himself he would have to run. Without standing on the order of his going, he whirled and fled toward the fence. The dog was close and rapidly drawing closer. Behind the dog came a white-turbaned figure that was urging the brute onward with strange language.
The front fence looked altogether too high for Carl, and he turned and made for a wall at the side of the yard. Just as he gained the foot of the barrier the dog was snapping at his heels.
"Dere!" he whooped, turning and smashing the guitar over the dog's head, "how you like dot, hey?"
The dog was rebuffed, but not discouraged. Carl had gained a few valuable seconds, and he grabbed at a vine that covered the wall and climbed frantically upward. He heard a growl below him as he ascended, and felt a shock as the savage teeth closed in his trousers. The dog was heavy, his jaws were as strong as a steel trap, and as Carl hung wildly to the vine he knew that something would have to give way or else that he would be captured. It was with a feeling of joy, therefore, that he heard a tearing sound and experienced a sudden relief from his enforced burden. The next moment he was over the wall and floundering about in a thorny rose-bush covered with beautiful blossoms. But the beautiful blossoms did not make so deep an impression on Carl as did the thorns.
As he rolled out of the bushes his language was intense and earnest; and when he got up in a cleared stretch of ground he felt a sudden coolness below the waist-line that informed him fully of his predicament. He had left an important part of his apparel in the next yard.
"Vat a luck id iss!" he muttered. "I porrowed dot kiddar from der vaider py der hodel, und id vas gone to smash. Meppy I vill haf to pay as mooch as fife tollars for dot. Und den dere vill be anodder fife tollars for some more pands. Fife und fife iss den. Oof I make some more serenadings I vill be busted. Vat a laff Matt und Tick vill gif me! Py shinks, I can't go pack py der hodel like dis! Vat iss to be dit? Mit some clot', und some neetles und t'read, I could make some patches. Vere vill I ged dem?"
He paused to shake his fist in the direction of the yard he had just left. All was silent on the other side, and the man and the dog, Carl reasoned, must have gone back where they belonged.