Within a week a suitable building had been secured in the Calle Grande, and Mr. Hemstetter's stock of shoes arranged upon their shelves. The rent of the store was moderate; and the stock made a fine showing of neat white boxes, attractively displayed.  
Johnny's friends stood by him loyally. On the first day Keogh strolled into the store in a casual kind of way about once every hour, and bought shoes. After he had purchased a pair each of extension soles, congress gaiters, button kids, low-quartered calfs, dancing pumps, rubber boots, tans of various , tennis shoes and flowered , he sought out Johnny to be prompted as to names of other kinds that he might inquire for. The other English-speaking residents also played their parts nobly by buying often and liberally. Keogh was grand marshal, and made them distribute their , thus keeping up a fair run of custom for several days.
 
Mr. Hemstetter was gratified by the amount of business done thus far; but expressed surprise that the natives were so backward with their custom.
 
"Oh, they're shy," explained Johnny, as he wiped his forehead . "They'll get the habit pretty soon. They'll come with a rush when they do come."
 
One afternoon Keogh dropped into the 's office, chewing an unlighted cigar thoughtfully.
 
"Got anything up your sleeve?" he inquired of Johnny. "If you have it's about time to show it. If you can borrow some gent's hat in the audience, and make a lot of customers for an idle stock of shoes come out of it, you'd better spiel. The boys have all laid in enough footwear to last 'em ten years; and there's nothing doing in the shoe store but dolcy far nienty. I just came by there. Your venerable victim was in the door, gazing through his specs at the bare toes passing by his emporium. The natives here have got the true . Me and Clancy took eighteen tintypes this morning in two hours. There's been but one pair of shoes sold all day. Blanchard went in and bought a pair of fur-lined house-slippers because he thought he saw Miss Hemstetter go into the store. I saw him throw the slippers into the afterwards."
 
"There's a Mobile fruit steamer coming in to-morrow or next day," said Johnny. "We can't do anything until then."
 
"What are you going to do—try to create a demand?"
 
"Political economy isn't your strong point," said the consul, . "You can't create a demand. But you can create a necessity for a demand. That's what I am going to do."
 
Two weeks after the consul sent his cable, a fruit steamer brought him a huge, mysterious brown bale of some unknown commodity. Johnny's influence with the custom-house people was strong for him to get the goods turned over to him without the usual . He had the bale taken to the and stowed in the back room.
 
That night he ripped open a corner of it and took out a handful of the cockleburrs. He examined them with the care with which a examines his arms before he goes to battle for his lady-love and life. The burrs were the ripe August product, as hard as filberts, and with as tough and sharp as needles. Johnny whistled softly a little , and went out to find Billy Keogh.
 
Later in the night, when Coralio was steeped in , he and Billy went forth into the streets with their coats like balloons. All up and down the Calle Grande they went, sowing the sharp burrs carefully in the sand, along the narrow sidewalks, in every foot of grass between the silent houses. And then they took the side streets and by-ways, missing none. No place where the foot of man, woman or child might fall was slighted. Many trips they made to and from the prickly . And then, nearly at the dawn, they laid themselves down to rest calmly, as great generals do after planning a victory according to the revised tactics, and slept, knowing that they had sowed with the accuracy of Satan sowing and the of Paul planting.
 
With the rising sun came the purveyors of fruits and meats, and arranged their in and around the little market-house. At one end of the town near the seashore the market-house stood; and the sowing of the burrs had not been carried that far. The waited long past the hour when their sales usually began. None came to buy. "Qué hay?" they began to exclaim, one to another.
 
At their accustomed time, from every 'dobe and palm hut and grass-thatched and dim women—black women, brown women, lemon-colored women, women dun and yellow and . They were the marketers starting to purchase the family supply of cassava, plantains, meat, , and tortillas. Décolleté they were and bare-armed and bare-footed, with a single skirt reaching below the knee. and ox-eyed, they stepped from their into the narrow paths or upon the soft grass of the streets.
 
The first to emerge uttered ambiguous , and raised one foot quickly. Another step and they sat down, with cries of alarm, to pick at the new and painful insects that had stung them upon the feet. "Qué picadores diablos!" they to one another across the narrow ways. Some tried the grass instead of the paths, but there they were also stung and bitten by the strange little prickly balls. They plumped down in the grass, and added their lamentations to those of their sisters in the sandy paths. All through the town was heard the plaint of the feminine . The venders in the market still wondered why no customers came.
 
Then men, lords of the earth, came forth. They, too, began to , to dance, to limp, and to curse. They stood and foolish, or stooped to pluck at the that attacked their feet and ankles. Some loudly proclaimed the pest to be poisonous spiders of an unknown species.
 
And then the children ran out for their morning . And now to the was added the howls of limping infants and cockleburred childhood. Every minute the advancing day brought forth fresh victims.
 
Doña Maria Castillas y Buenventura de las Casas stepped from her honoured , as was her daily custom, to fresh bread from the panaderia across the street. She was clad in a skirt of flowered yellow satin, a chemise of , and wore a purple mantilla from the of Spain. Her lemon-tinted feet, ! were bare. Her progress was , for were not her ancestors hidalgos of Aragon? Three steps she made across the grass, and set her aristocratic sole upon a bunch of Johnny's burrs. Doña Maria Castillas y Buenventura de las Casas emitted a yowl even as a wild-cat. Turning about, she fell upon hands and knees, and crawled—ay, like a beast of the field she crawled back to her door-sill.
 
Don Señor Ildefonso Federico Valdazar, Juez de la Paz, weighing twenty stone, attempted to convey his bulk to the pulperia at the corner of the in order to his matutinal thirst. The first of his unshod foot into the cool grass struck a mine. Don Ildefonso fell like a cathedral, crying out that he had been fatally bitten by a deadly . Everywhere were the shoeless citizens , stumbling, limping, and picking from their feet the venomous insects that had come in a single night to them.
 
The first to perceive the remedy was Estebán Delgado, the barber, a man of travel and education. Sitting upon a stone, he plucked burrs from his toes, and made :
 
", my friends, these of the devil! I know them well. They soar through the skies in like pigeons. These are the dead ones that fell during the night. In Yucatan I have seen them as large as oranges. Yes! There they like serpents, ............