II.

THE MAN WITH A GRIEVANCE.

Late that same night a young man stepped from a window in one of the
rooms on the third floor in the Hotel du Louvre in Paris, and stood in
the balcony. It was a balcony in that side of the hotel which looks on
the Rue de Rivoli. The young man smoked a cigar and leaned over the
balcony.

It was a soft moonlight night. The hour was late and the streets were
nearly silent. The latest omnibus had gone its way, and only now and
then a rare and lingering _voiture_ clicked and clattered along, to
disappear round the corner of the place in front of the Palais Royal.
The long line of gas lamps, looking a faint yellow beneath the hotel and
the Louvre Palace across the way, seemed to deepen and deepen into
redder sparks the further the eye followed them to the right as they
stretched on to the Place de la Concorde and the Champs Elysees. To the
left the young man, leaning from the balcony, could see the tower of St.
Jacques standing darkly out against the faint, pale blue of the
moonlighted sky. The street was a line of silver or snow in the
moonlight.

The young man was tall, thin, dark, and handsome. He was unmistakably
English, although he had an excitable and nervous way about him which
did not savor of British coolness and composure. He seemed a person not
to take anything easily. Even the moonlight, and the solitude, and the
indescribably soothing and philosophic influence of the contemplation of
a silent city from the serene heights of a balcony, did not prevail to
take him out of himself into the upper ether of mental repose. He pulled
his long moustaches now and then, until they met like a kind of strap
beneath his chin, and again he twisted their ends up as if he desired to
appear fierce as a champion duellist of the Bonapartist group. He
sometimes took his cigar from his lips and held it between his fingers
until it went out, and when he put it into his mouth again he took
several long puffs before he quite realized the fact that he was puffing
at what one might term dry stubble. Then he pulled out a box of fusees
and lighted his cigar in an irritated way, as if he were protesting that
really the fates were bearing down upon him rather too heavily, and that
he was entitled to complain at last.

"Good evening, sir," said a strong, full British voice that sounded just
at his elbow.

The young man, looking round, saw that his next-door neighbor in the
hotel had likewise opened his w