possible.'

'I wish to goodness you'd give up these horrible explorations,' cried
Dick. 'They make the rest of us feel so abominably unadventurous.'

'But they're the very breath of my nostrils,' answered Alec. 'You don't
know the exhilaration of the daily dangers, the joy of treading where
only the wild beasts have trodden before.'

'I freely confess that I don't want to,' said Dick.

Alec sprang up and stretched his legs. As he spoke all signs of
lassitude disappeared, and he was seized with an excitement that was
rarely seen in him.

'Already I can hardly bear my impatience when I think of the boundless
country and the enchanting freedom. Here one grows so small, so mean;
but in Africa everything is built to a nobler standard. There the man is
really a man. There one knows what are will and strength and courage.
You don't know what it is to stand on the edge of some great plain and
breathe the pure keen air after the terrors of the forest.'

'The boundless plain of Hyde Park is enough for me,' said Dick. 'And the
aspect of Piccadilly on a fine day in June gives me quite as many
emotions as I want.'

But Julia was moved by Alec's unaccustomed rhetoric, and she looked at
him earnestly.

'But what will you gain by it now that your work is over--by all the
danger and all the hardships?'

He turned his dark, solemn eyes upon her.

'Nothing. I want to gain nothing. Perhaps I shall discover some new
species of antelope or some unknown plant. I may be fortunate enough to
find a new waterway. That is all the reward I want. I love the sense of
power and the mastery. What do you think I care for the tinsel rewards
of kings and peoples!'

'I always said you were melodramatic,' said Dick. 'I never heard
anything so transpontine.'

'And the end of it?' asked Julia, almost in a whisper. 'What will be the
end?'

A faint smile played for an instant upon Alec's lips. He shrugged his
shoulders.

'The end is death. But I shall die standing up. I shall go the last
journey as I have gone every other.'

He stopped, for he would not add the last two words. Julia said them for
him.

'Without fear.'

'For all the world like the wicked baronet,' cried the mocking Dick.
'Once aboard the lugger, and the gurl is mine.'

Julia reflected for a little while. She did not want to resist the
admiration with which Alec filled her. But she shuddered. He did not
seem to fit in with the generality of men.

'Don't you want people