e brown bodies of the Apaches, the first
skirmish and the last. From a soldier he had turned journalist, tramped
the streets of Washington in rain and shine, living as a man lived who
must.

One day his star had shot up from the nadir of obscurity, not very far,
but enough to bring his versatility under the notice of the discerning
Secretary of State, who, having been a friend of the father, offered
the son a berth in the diplomatic corps. A consulate in a South American
republic, during a revolutionary crisis, where he had shown consummate
skill in avoiding political complications (and where, by a shrewd
speculation in gold, he had feathered his nest for his declining years),
proved that the continual incertitude of a journalistic career is a fine
basis for diplomatic work. From South America he had gone to Calcutta,
thence to Austria.

He was only twenty-nine, which age in some is youth. He possessed an old
man's wisdom and a boy's exuberance of spirits. He laughed whenever he
could; to him life was a panorama of vivid pictures, the world a
vast theater to which somehow he had gained admission. His beardless
countenance had deceived more than one finished diplomat, for it was
difficult to believe that behind it lay an earnest purpose and a daring
courage. If he bragged a little, quizzed graybeards, sought strange
places, sported with convention, and eluded women, it was due to his
restlessness. Yet, he had the secretiveness of sand; he absorbed, but
he revealed nothing. He knew his friends; they thought they knew him. It
was his delight to have women think him a butterfly, men write him down
a fool; it covered up his real desires and left him free.

What cynicism he had was mellowed by a fanciful humor. Whether with
steel or with words, he was a master of fence; and if at times some one
got under his guard, that some one knew it not. To let your enemy see
that he has hit you is to give him confidence. He saw humor where no one
else saw it, and tragedy where it was not suspected. He was one of those
rare individuals who, when the opportunity of chance refuses to come,
makes one.

"Germany and Austria are great countries," he mused, lighting a cigar.
"Every hundredth man is a king, one in fifty is a duke, every tenth man
is a prince, and one can not take a corner without bumping into a
count or a baron. Even the hotel waiters are disquieting; there is that
embarrassing atmosphere about them which suggests nobility i