e word "traitor," branded upon his brow as a badge of
shame, and again he wandered along that devious path which had led him
year by year downward. Too bitterly self-accusing to palliate his past,
he only knew that in all the long years of social pariahhood he had
learned to despise all men and to trust no woman! For had not Friendship
been a lie to him, Love only a hollow cheat, and woman's vows of
deathless loyalty but writ in sand to be washed out by the next wave of
passion?

And yet, stained with crime, there was one breath of truth which swept
over his soul as fresh as the voice of the "pines of Ramoth Hill!"
His eyes were misty and his breath choked in a sorrowing gasp of manly
remorse, as the winsome face of the true-hearted Justine rose up before
him in this hour of lonely agony! Her devotion had touched the wayworn
wanderer, and, pure and unselfish, her love had been the one bright star
of all these darkened years!

"By Jove! She is a royal soul! If I could only save her the shock of the
awakening," he murmured. His heart beat generously in a thrill of pride
recalling Justine's steadfast devotion to the motherless girl whom he
had sought to entangle. "Far above rubies!" he cried, and the memory
of the fond woman who was watching for him at Lausanne, swept over his
stormy soul to bring unbidden tears to eyes which had never flinched
before the red flash of the grim cannon.

"There are still good women in the world!" he muttered, "and, God bless
you, you have taught me this, Justine!" Drawing her picture from his
bosom, he gazed fondly at the face of the gentle-hearted daughter of the
Alps. A vain and passionate regret racked his bosom--the last struggle
of his wavering soul! "Shall I turn back?" he doubtfully cried. And then
in the rush of his onward course, a dull hopeless feeling came over him.
"Kismet!" he cried. "It is too late now. If they had only trusted me! If
they had told me all and given my fighting soul a chance to redeem the
lost promise once written on my brow. I have played a man's part before!
I might, perhaps, have won this girl's gratitude and earned Justine's
love to be a shield and a buckler to me. But--" his head, overweaned
with care, drooped down, and in the company of strange visions and and
dreams of ominous import, the hunted soldier of fortune forgot alike the
echoing voice of his better angel, and lost from view, the shadowy
faces of both the woman who had lured him to a living dea