mplacent and affable, returned to Washington accompanied by
David. A month later the newly made consul sailed from New York for
South America. He landed at a South American seaport that had a fine
harbor snugly guarded by jutting cliffs skirting the base of a hill
barren and severe in aspect.

As he walked down the narrow, foreign streets thronged with a strange
people, and saw the structures with their meaningless signs, he began
to feel a wave of homesickness. Then, looking up, he felt that little
inner thrill that comes from seeing one's flag in a foreign land.

"And that is why I am here," he thought, "to keep that flag flying."

He resolutely started out on the first day to keep the flag flying in
the manner befitting the kind of a consul he meant to be. He
maintained a strict watch over the commercial conditions, and his
reports of consular news were promptly rendered in concise and
instructive form. His native tact and inherent courtesy won him favor
with the government, his hospitality and kindly intent conciliated the
natives, and he was soon also accorded social privileges. He began to
enjoy life. His duties were interesting, and his leisure was devoted
to the pursuit of novel pleasures.

Fletcher Wilder, the son of the president of an American mining
company, was down there ostensibly to look after his father's
interests, but in reality to take out pleasure parties in his trim
little yacht, and David soon came to be the most welcome guest that
set foot on its deck.

At the end of a year, when his duties had become a matter of routine
and his life had lost the charm of novelty, David's ambitions started
from their slumbers, though not this time in a political way. Wilder
had cruised away, and the young consul was conscious of a sense of
aloneness. He spent his evenings on his spacious veranda, from where
he could see the moonlight making a rippling road of silver across the
black water. The sensuous beauty of the tropical nights brought him
back to his early Land of Dreams, and the pastime that he had been
forced to relinquish for action now appealed to him with overwhelming
force and fascination. But the dreams were a man's dreams, not the
fleeting fancies of a boy. They continued to possess and absorb him
until one night, when he was looking above the mountains at one lone
star that shone brighter than the rest, he was moved for the first
time to give material shape and form to his conceptions. The impu