wn. One of the few mercies of this
country is the number of dead trees and the bushes from which one can
always scrape the materials for a fire.

Adams, with his hunting knife and a small hatchet which was all steel and
so had been uninjured in the catastrophe, cut wood enough for the fire.
They had nothing to cook with, but fortunately the food they had with them
did not require cooking.

The tent was practicable, for the pole, so well had it been spliced, was
as good as new. They set it up, and having eaten their supper, crept under
it, leaving the porters to keep watch or not as they chose.

Berselius, who had marched so well all day, had broken down at the finish.
He seemed half dead with weariness, and scarcely spoke a word, eating
mechanically and falling to sleep immediately on lying down.

But he was happy. Happy as the man who suddenly finds that he can outwalk
the paralysis threatening him, or the man who finds the fog of blindness
lifting before him, showing him again bit by bit the world he had deemed
forever lost. Whilst this man sleeps in the tent beside his companion and
the waning moon breaks up over the horizon and mixes her light with the
red flicker of the fire, a word about that past of which he was in search
may not be out of place.

Berselius was of mixed nationality. His father of Swedish descent, his
mother of French.

Armand Berselius the elder was what is termed a lucky man. In other words,
he had that keenness of intellect which enables the possessor to seize
opportunities and to foresee events.

This art of looking into the future is the key to Aladdin's Palace and to
the Temple of Power. To know what will appreciate in value and what will
depreciate, that is the art of success in life, and that was the art which
made Armand Berselius a millionaire.

Berselius the younger grew up in an atmosphere of money. His mother died
when he was quite young. He had neither brothers nor sisters; his father,
a chilly-hearted sensualist, had a dislike to the boy; for some obscure
reason, without any foundation in fact, he fancied that he was some other
man's son.

The basis of an evil mind is distrust. Beware of the man who is always
fearful of being swindled. Who cannot trust, cannot be trusted.

Berselius treated his son like a brute, and the boy, with great power for
love in his heart, conceived a hatred for the man who misused him that was
hellish in intensity.

But not a sign of it did he