and that the glass cases were yearning to be filled. The youth
had been employed in Soudanese excavations and research. Now that work
had ended and with it the pay, the necessity for other work and pay had
not ended.

"The billet down there," suggested the elder man, "will be no end
beastly, I dare say. A tramp steamer sails from Port Said in three days
for Singapore, Sandakan and the South Seas. The pay will be one hundred
and fifty pounds for the job. The fare will probably be maggoty
biscuits--still, if you feel game to have a dash at it----" The speaker
finished with a shrug which seemed to add, "It's never difficult to find
a fool."

But the young man laughed with a whole-hearted enthusiasm, that
entirely missed the under note of contempt in the manner of his
benefactor. "Well, rather," he declared. "And I say, you know, its jolly
good of you, sir."

Later I made the acquaintance of the young Briton in the American bar
where over Scotch and soda we discussed the project, to the end that I
nominated and elected myself an assistant forager for the British
Museum, serving at my own expense. There was something likeable about my
new and naive acquaintance, who was so eager to shoulder his futile way
across a third of the globe's circumference in search of crudely
inscribed rocks and axe-heads and decaying skulls. My own experience in
life had been even more futile. I had learned to speak five languages
and had completely failed of gaining a foothold in five useful
professions: Art, Law, Literature, Music and Contentment. Possibly the
appeasement of my Salatheal hunger, the curing of the curse, did not
after all lie along the routes of Cunarders and Pullmans. Maybe I was
still nibbling at travel as the school-girl nibbles at chocolates.
Perhaps his method of taking the long and empty trail was the heroic
medicine my itching feet required. At all events, I sententiously quoted
to myself, "I think It will kill me or cure, and I think I will go there
and see."

When I informed young Mansfield, for that proved to be his name, that I
meant to be his traveling companion, his almost childlike face took on
an incredulous expression. He was a great two-hundred-pound chap whose
physique should logically have been the asset of a pirate or a pugilist,
but the visage which surmounted it had a rosy pinkness and his blue eyes
wore the guileless charity of essential innocence. With his physical
power went a long-suffering good na