f up from the obscurity of
a frontier American farm into the higher life. Uncouth, awkward, and
yet resolute and untiring, he had justified his first instructor's
prediction:

"He has the head of a horse, and will make his mark!" Newspaper
trainboy, chainman, assistant on Government frontier surveys, and
frontier scout, he early saved his money so as to complete a sporadic
university curriculum. A trip to Liberia, a dash down into Mexico, and a
desert jaunt in Australia, had not satisfied his craving for adventure.
With the results of two years of professional lectures, he was now
imbibing continental experiences, and plotting a bicycle "scientific
tour of the world." Hard-headed, fearless, devoted, and sincere, he was
a mad theorist in all his mental processes, and had tried, proved,
and rejected free love, anarchy, Christian science, and a dozen other
feverish fads, which for a time jangled his mental bells out of tune.
A cranky tracing of the lost Ten Tribes of Israel down to the genial
scalpers of the American plains had thrown him across the renowned
Professor Andrew Fraser, who had, on his part, located these same
long mourned Hebrews in Thibet, ignoring the fact that they are really
dispersed in the United States of America as "eaters of other men's
hard-made 'honey'" in the "drygoods," clothing, and "shent per shent"
line. For, a glance at the signs on Broadway will prove to any one that
the "lost" have been found in Gotham.

Smoking his corncob pipe the Professor paced his rooms at the Royal
Victoria, and mentally consigned Prince Djiddin and his indefatigable
Moonshee to Eblis, the Inferno, Sheol, or some other ardent corner of
Limbo. "How long will these two yellow fellows keep poor old Fraser
enchanted?" mused the disgruntled American, mindful of his hotel bill
running on. "The old man is crazy after the two Thibetans, and I can't
see his game. He does not wish me to publish my own volume first. That
is why he has given me the 'marble heart,' and taken them into his
house. Their wing of the Banker's Folly is now an Eastern idolaters'
temple. If I could only hook on to the 'Moonshee,' I might make a
'scoop'--a clean scoop--on old Fraser. God! how my book would sell if I
could only get it out first. And yet I dare not offend this old scholar,
Andrew Fraser. He must be true to me. He has read to me all the original
manuscript of his own half-finished work. He must trust to me, and he
has promised to give me a