play for the cheque which he knew to be
valueless. But why, thought Aristide, did he not at once consent to sell
the papers on the stipulation that he should be paid in notes? Aristide
found an answer. He wanted to get everything for nothing, afraid of the
use that Aristide might make of a damning confession, and also relying
for success on his manipulation of the cards. Finally he had desired to
get hold of a dangerous cheque. In that he had been foiled. But the trio
has got away with his thousand pounds, his wonderful thousand pounds. He
reflected, still keeping an attentive eye on young Eugene Miller and
interjecting a sympathetic word, that after he had paid his hotel bill,
he would be as poor on quitting Aix-les-Bains as he was when he had
entered it. _Sic transit_.... As it was in the beginning with Aristide
Pujol, is now and ever shall be....

"But I have my clothes--such clothes as I've never had in my life,"
thought Aristide. "And a diamond and sapphire tie-pin and a gold watch,
and all sorts of other things. _Tron de l'air_, I'm still rich."

"Who would have thought she was like that?" said he. "And a hundred
pounds, too. A lot of money."

For nothing in the world would he have confessed himself a
fellow-victim.

"I don't care a cent for the hundred pounds," cried the young man. "Our
factory turns out seven hundred and sixty-seven million pairs of boots
per annum." (Aristide, not I, is responsible for the statistics.) "But I
have a feeling that in this hoary country I'm just a little toddling
child. And I hate it. I do, sir. I want a nurse to take me round."

Aristide flashed the lightning of his wit upon the young man from
Atlanta, Georgia.

"You do, my dear young friend. I'll be your nurse, at a weekly
salary--say a hundred francs--it doesn't matter. We will not quarrel."
Eugene Miller was startled. "Yes," said Aristide, with a convincing
flourish. "I'll clear robbers and sirens and harpies from your path.
I'll show you things in Europe--from Tromsoe to Cap Spartivento that you
never dreamed of. I'll lead you to every stained glass window in the
world. I know them all."

"I particularly want to see those in the church of St. Sebald in
Nuremberg."

"I know them like my pocket," said Aristide. "I will take you there. We
start to-day."

"But, Mr. Pujol," said the somewhat bewildered Georgian. "I thought you
were a man of fortune."

"I am more than a man. I am a soldier. I am a soldier of Fortune.