searching for opportunities to make his fortune. But being the kind of
man he was, fortune seemed always to elude him. In course of time he
became rather well known on the China Coast--known as a beach-comber.
And even when he went into the remote, interior province of Szechuan,
where he lived a precarious, hand-to-mouth existence for several
years, he was also known as a beach-comber. Which shows that being two
thousand miles inland does not alter the characteristics associated
with that name.

Personally, he was not a bad sort. Men liked him, that is, men of his
own type. Some of them succeeded better than he did, and afterwards
referred to him as "poor old Rivers," although he was not really old
at that time. Neither was he really old either, when he died, several
years later. He was rather interesting too, in a way, since he had
experienced many adventures in the course of his wanderings in remote
parts of the country, which adventures were rather tellable. He even
knew a lot about China, too, which is more than most people do who
have lived in China many years. Had he been of that sort, he might
have written rather valuable books, containing his shrewd observations
and intimate, underhand knowledge of political and economic
conditions. But he was emphatically not of that sort, so continued to
lead his disreputable, roving life for a period of ten years. At the
end of which time he met a plaintive little Englishwoman, just out
from Home, and she, knowing nothing whatever of Rivers, but being
taken with his glib tongue and rather handsome person, married him.

As the wife of a confirmed beach-comber she had rather a hard time of
it. But for all that she was so plaintive and so supine, there was a
certain quality of force within her, and she insisted upon some
provision for the future. They were living in the interior at that
time, not too far in, and Rivers had come down to Shanghai to
negotiate some transactions for a certain firm. He could do things
like that well enough when he wanted to, as he had a certain ability,
and a knowledge of two or three Chinese dialects, and these things he
could put to account when he felt like it. Aided by his wife,
stimulated by her quiet, subtle insistence, he put through the
business entrusted to him, and the business promised success. Which
meant that the interior town in which they found themselves would soon
be opened to foreign trade. And as a new trade centre, however smal