ther land where war shall be. But where there is war,
only the predestined suffer--those born under Erlik--children of the
Dark Star."

"I thought," said the Reverend Wilbour Carew, "that my brother had
confessed Christ."

"I am but repeating to you what my father believed; and Temujin before
him," replied the native convert, his remote gaze lost in reflection.

His eyes were quite little and coloured like a lion's; and sometimes,
in deep reverie, the corners of his upper lip twitched.

This happened when Ruhannah lay fretting in her mother's arms, and the
hot wind blew on Trebizond.

* * * * *

Under the Dark Star, too, a boy grew up in Minetta Lane, not less
combative than other ragged boys about him, but he was inclined to
arrange and superintend fist fights rather than to participate in
battle, except with his wits.

His name was Eddie Brandes; his first fortune of three dollars was
amassed at craps; he became a hanger-on in ward politics, at
race-tracks, stable, club, squared ring, vaudeville, burlesque. Long
Acre attracted him--but always the gambling end of the operation.

Which predilection, with its years of ups and downs, landed him one
day in Western Canada with an "Unknown" to match against an Athabasca
blacksmith, and a training camp as the prospect for the next six
weeks.

There lived there, gradually dying, one Albrecht Dumont, lately head
gamekeeper to nobility in the mountains of a Lost Province, and
wearing the Iron Cross of 1870 on the ruins of a gigantic and bony
chest, now as hollow as a Gothic ruin.

And if, like a thousand fellow patriots, he had been ordered to the
Western World to watch and report to his Government the trend and
tendency of that Western, English-speaking world, only his Government
and his daughter knew it--a child of the Dark Star now grown to early
womanhood, with a voice like a hermit thrush and the skill of a
sorceress with anything that sped a bullet.

* * * * *

Before the Unknown was quite ready to meet the Athabasca blacksmith,
Albrecht Dumont, dying faster now, signed his last report to the
Government at Berlin, which his daughter Ilse had written for
him--something about Canadian canals and stupid Yankees and their
greed, indifference, cowardice, and sloth.

Dumont's mind wandered:

"After the well-born Herr Gott relieves me at my post," he whispered,
"do thou pick up