ing waters of the arrowy Rhone, as if he fain would cast the
dark burden of his dreary thoughts far away from him down into those
darkling waters. But thirty-two years of age, Alan Hawke had already
outlived all his wild boyish romances. The thrill with which he had
first set foot upon the land of Clive and Warren Hastings had faded away
long years gone! And, Fate had stranded him at Geneva!

As he sat, still irresolute as to his future movements, the dying
sunlight gilded the splendid panorama of the whole Mont Blanc group.
Rose and purple, with fading gold and amethystine gleams played softly
upon the far-away giant peak, with its noble bodyguard, the Aiguilles
du Midi, Grandes Jorasses, the Dent du Geant, the sturdy pyramid of
the Mole, and the long far sweep of the Voirons. But he noted not
these splendors of the dying sun god, as he stood there moodily defying
adverse fate, a modern Manfred. "I might with this get on to London--but
what waits me there? Only scorn, callous neglect!" His eye fell upon the
statue of Jean Jacques, lifted up there by the sturdy men who have for
centuries clung to the golden creeds of civil and religious liberty--the
independence of man--and the freedom of the unshackled human soul.
"Poor Rousseau! seer and parasite, fugitive adventurer, the sport of the
great, the eater of bitter bread--the black bread of dependence! I will
not linger here in a long-drawn agony! Here, I will end it forever, and
to-night!"

There were certain visions of the past which returned to shake even
the iron nerves of Alan Hawke! Face to face now with his half formed
resolution of suicide, the wasted past slowly unrolled itself before
him.

The brief days of his service in India, an abrupt exit from the service,
long years of wandering in Japan and China, as a gentleman adventurer,
and all the singular phases of a nomadic life in Burmah, Nepaul,
Cashmere, Bhootan, and the Pamirs.

He smiled in derision at the recollection of a briefly flattering
fortune which had rebaptized him with a shadowy title of uncertain
origin. Thus far, his visiting card, "Major Alan Hawke, Bombay Club" had
been an easily vised passport, but--alas--good only among his own kind!
He was but a free lance of the polished "Detrimentals," and, under this
last adverse stroke of fortune, his poor cockboat was being swamped in
the black waters of adversity. He had staked much upon a little campaign
at the Foreign Office in London. The cold re