ourth Chapter: A Parable of Two Horses

III. EQUATORIA. (_Allegro. Scherzo_.)

Twenty-fifth Chapter: Bedient for _The Pleiad_
Twenty-sixth Chapter: How Startling is Truth
Twenty-seventh Chapter: The Art of Miss Mallory
Twenty-eighth Chapter: A Further Note from Rey
Twenty-ninth Chapter: At _Treasure Island Inn_
Thirtieth Chapter: Miss Mallory's Mastery
Thirty-first Chapter: The Glow-worm's One Hour
Thirty-second Chapter: In the Little Room Next
Thirty-third Chapter: The Hills and the Skies
Thirty-fourth Chapter: The Supreme Adventure
Thirty-fifth Chapter: Fate Knocks at the Door

IV. NEW YORK. (_Allegro. Finale_.)

Thirty-sixth Chapter: The Great Prince House
Thirty-seventh Chapter: Beth and Adith Mallory
Thirty-eighth Chapter: A Self-Conscious Woman
Thirty-ninth Chapter: Another _Smilax_ Affair
Fortieth Chapter: Full Day Upon the Plain

FATE KNOCKS AT THE DOOR

I

ASIA

_Allegro con brio_

FIRST CHAPTER

THE GREAT WIND STRIKES

Andrew Bedient, at the age of seventeen, in a single
afternoon,--indeed, in one moment of a single afternoon,--performed an
action which brought him financial abundance for his mature years.
Although this narrative less concerns the boy Bedient than the man as
he approaches twice seventeen, the action is worthy of account, beyond
the riches that it brought, because it seems to draw him into somewhat
clearer vision from the shadows of a very strange boyhood.

April, 1895, the _Truxton_, of which Andrew was cook, found herself
becalmed in the China Sea, midway between Manila and Hong Kong, her
nose to the North. She was a smart clipper of sixty tons burden, with a
slightly uptilted stern, and as clever a line forward as a pleasure
yacht. She was English, comparatively new, and, properly used by the
weather, was as swift and sprightly of service as an affectionate
woman. Her master was Captain Carreras, a tubby little man of
forty-five, bald, modest, and known among the shipping as "a perfect
lady." He wore a skull-cap out of port; and as constantly, except
during meals, carried one of a set of rarely-colored meerschaum-bowls,
to which were attachable, bamboo-stems, amber-tipped and of various
lengths.

The little Captain was fastidious in dress, wearing soft shirts of
white silk, fine duck trousers and scented silk handkerchiefs, which he
carried in his left hand with the meerscha