The Apache obeyed with alacrity, and, performing the task with rapidity and skill, turned to depart.
"A nimble-fingered sharper," observed the Italian, and, rising swiftly, bestowed a shattering kick upon the retreating Frenchman. Recovering his balance after the sudden forward propulsion, the Apache wheeled round like lightning, bent double, and flew at his assailant. Courage was his one virtue, and he was the finest exponent of the art of butting in all the purlieus and environs of Montmartre, and had not only laid out many a good bourgeois, but had overcome many a rival, by this preliminary to five minutes' strenuous kicking with heavy boots. If he launched himself—a one-hundred-and-fifty pound projectile—with his hard skull as battering-ram, straight at the stomach of his tormentor, that astounded individual ought to go violently to the ground, doubled up, winded and helpless. A score of tremendous kicks would then teach him that an Apache King (and he, none other than Tou-Tou Boil-the-Cat, doyen of the heroes of the Rue de Venise, Rue Pirouette, and Rue des Innocents, caveau-knight and the beloved of the beauteous Casque d'Or) was not a person lightly to be trifled with.
But if Monsieur Tou-Tou Boil-the-Cat was a Roi des Apaches, Luigi Rivoli was an acrobat and juggler, and, to mighty strength, added marvellous poise, quickness and skill.
"Ça ne marche pas, gobemouche," he remarked, and, at the right moment, his knee shot up with tremendous force and crashed into the face of the butting Apache. For the first time the famous and terrible attack of the King of the Paris hooligans had failed. When the un-
