We'll get a cab and go out to the Paseo. S-s-sh! Keep it quiet; we don't want all this mob.«

Later they tumbled into a cab – Pop, Freddie, the Kids, old Colonel Hammigan and Benson. They whispered to the men who had wagered: »The Paseo.« The cab whirled away up the black street. There was occasional grunts and groans, cries of »Oh, get off me feet,« and of »Quit! you're killing me.« Six people do not have fun in one cab. The principals spoke to each other with the respect and friendliness which comes to good men at such times. Once a Kid put his head out of the window and looked backward. He pulled it in again and cried: »Great Scott! Look at that, would you!« The others struggled to do as they were bid, and afterward shouted: »Holy smoke! Well, I'll be blowed! Thunder and turf!«

Galloping after them came innumerable other cabs, their lights twinkling, streaming in a great procession through the night. »The street is full of them,« ejaculated the old colonel.

The Paseo de la Reforma is the famous drive of the City of Mexico, leading to the Castle of Chapultepec, which last ought to be well known in the United States.

It is a broad fine avenue of macadam with a much greater quality of dignity than anything of the kind we possess in our own land. It seems of the Old World, where to the beauty of the thing itself is added the solemnity of tradition and history, the knowledge that feet in buskins trod the same stones, that cavalcades of steel thundered there before the coming of carriages.

When the Americans tumbled out of their cabs the giant bronzes of Aztec and Spaniard loomed dimly above them like towers. The four rows of poplar trees rustled weirdly off there in the darkness. Pop took out his watch and struck a match. »Well, hurry up this thing. It's almost midnight.«

The other cabs came swarming, the drivers lashing their horses, for these Americans, who did all manner of strange things, nevertheless always paid well for it. There was a mighty hubbub then in the darkness. Five or six men began to pace off the distance and quarrel. Others knotted their handkerchiefs together to make a tape. Men were swearing over bets, fussing and fuming about the odds. Benson came to the Kids swaggering. »You're a pair of asses.« The cabs waited in a solid block down the avenue. Above the crowd the tall statues hid their visages in the night.

At last a voice floated through the darkness. »Are you ready there?« Everybody yelled excitedly. The men at the tape pulled it out straight. »Hold it higher, Jim, you fool!« A silence fell then upon the throng. Men bended down trying to pierce the darkness with their eyes. From out at the starting point came muffled voices. The crowd swayed and jostled.

The racers did not come. The crowd began to fret, its nerves burning. »Oh, hurry up,« shrilled some one.

The voice called again: »Ready there?« Everybody replied: »Yes, all ready. Hurry up!«

There was more muffled discussion at the starting point. In the crowd a man began to make a proposition.