ad he, Bunker Bean, perhaps once espoused the daughter of a rajah, and
been happy in religious studies with her? Had he, perchance, been even
the rajah himself? Why not?

The romance was never finished. A worried son of the old gentleman
appeared one day, alleged that he had run off from a good home where he
was kindly treated, and by mild force carried him back. But he had
performed his allotted part in Bean's life.

A few books had been left and these were read. Death was a recurring
incident in an endless life. Wise men he saw had found this an answer to
all problems--founders of religions and philosophies--Buddha,
Pythagoras, Plato, the Christ. Wise moderns had accepted it, Max Mueller
and Hume and Goethe, Fichte, Schelling, Lessing. Bean could not appraise
these authorities, but the names somehow sounded convincing and the men
had seemed to think that reincarnation was the only doctrine of
immortality a philosopher could consider.

It remained, then, to explore the Karmic past of Bunker Bean; not in any
mood of lightness. A verse quoted by the old man had given him pause:

"Who toiled a slave may come anew a prince
For gentle worthiness and merit won;
Who ruled a king may wander earth in rags
For things done and undone."

What might he have been? For ruling once as a king, a bad king, was he
now merely Bunker Bean, not precisely roaming the earth in rags, but
sidling timidly through its terrors, disbelieving in himself, afraid of
policemen, afraid of life?

So he confronted and considered the thing, fascinated by its vistas as
once he had been by the shell. If it were true that we cast away our
worn bodies and ever reclothe ourselves with new, why should not the
right member of Mrs. Jackson's profession one day unfold to him his
beginningless past?

III

"The courts havin' decided," continued Breede, in staccato explosions,
"that the 'quipment is nes'ry part of road, without which road would be
tot'ly crippled, you will note these first moggige 'quipment bonds take
pri'rty over first-moggige bonds, an' gov'n y'sef 'cordingly your ver'
truly--"

He glanced up at Bean, contracted his brows to a black menace and
emitted a final detonation.

"'S all for 's aft'noon!"

He bit savagely into his unlighted cigar and began to rifle through a
new sheaf of documents. Bean deftly effaced himself, with a parting
glare at the unlighted cigar. It was a feature of Breede that no
reporter ever ne