f life--and his homeland!

Peter the Brazen had drunk all too indulgently at the bitter fountain.

CHAPTER XVI

In the months which had passed since their romantic parting on the bund
at Shanghai, Peter the Brazen had founded all of his roseate notions of
Eileen Lorimer upon the one-sided data furnished by those spirited few
hours.

He had thought of her as a lonely little creature, sole inhabitant of a
world apart, to which he would some time go and claim her.

He had not taken into his calculations at any time such prosaic objects
as parents, brothers, sisters, and, more vital than all, other young
men who might have found the same qualities in Eileen to adore as had
attracted and bound him.

When, from a long-distance telephone-booth in the Hotel St. Francis, he
finally was connected with the Lorimer residence in Pasadena, it was to
hear the gruff, masculine accents of a person who claimed to be her
father, and who was brusque and impulsive in his inquiries regarding
Peter's identity.

Peter did not know, or realize, that Mr. Lorimer would have willingly
cut off his right hand for the young man who had restored his daughter
to him nearly a year before. He was simply struck more or less dumb,
with a schoolboy sort of feeling, when he was aware that, five hundred
miles overland, a gruff father wanted righteously to know his business.

By adroit parrying, without giving out his identity, Peter at length
secured the information he wanted. Romola Borria had been truthful;
Eileen was attending the university at San Friole.

With her San Friole address jotted down in the back of his red
note-book, Peter endeavored to be connected with Miss Lorimer by
telephone. After a trying pause the long-distance operator advised him
that the residence in question did not possess a telephone.

Quartering what remained of his capital by the costly Pasadena call,
Peter resorted to the telegraph stand, and waited in the lobby for an
answer.

The first of the several bits of unpalatable news he was to be given
during the day was delivered to him as he waited, when, unnoticed at
first, a Chinese gentleman, a Mr. San Toy Fong, a passenger from
Shanghai on the _King of Asia_, came out of the dining-room and
occupied a chair at his side, cordially and candidly revealing an
identity which Peter had suspected during the entire voyage.

"Mr. Moore," the emissary began in a low, confident voice, "I am
returning to China to-ni