e would often lean over the bulwark rail and watch the swell slip by,
as if questioning the water. Then the sunsets began to weigh upon his
heart, and the stars to speak to him in a new language, and he knew
that it was time to return, if he would return with a whole mind.

When he got back to San Francisco he called upon his agent, Wannamaker
of Kearney Street, but there was still no news.

CHAPTER III

CAPTAIN FOUNTAIN

He had a suite of rooms at the Palace Hotel, and he lived the life of
any other rich man who is not addicted to pleasure. He knew some of the
best people in the city, and conducted himself so sanely in all
respects that a casual stranger would never have guessed his reputation
for madness; but when you knew him better, you would find sometimes in
the middle of a conversation that his mind was away from the subject;
and were you to follow him in the street, you would hear him in
conversation with himself. Once at a dinner-party he rose and left the
room, and did not return. Trifles, but sufficient to establish a
reputation of a sort.

One morning--to be precise, it was the second day of May, exactly eight
years and five months after the wreck of the Northumberland--Lestrange
was in his sitting-room reading, when the bell of the telephone, which
stood in the corner of the room, rang. He went to the instrument.

"Are you there?" came a high American voice. "Lestrange--right--come
down and see me--Wannamaker--I have news for you."

Lestrange held the receiver for a moment, then he put it back in the
rest. He went to a chair and sat down, holding his head between his
hands, then he rose and went to the telephone again; but he dared not
use it, he dare not shatter the newborn hope.

"News!" What a world lies in that word.

In Kearney Street he stood before the door of Wannamaker's office
collecting himself and watching the crowd drifting by, then he entered
and went up the stairs. He pushed open a swing-door and entered a great
room. The clink and rattle of a dozen typewriters filled the place, and
all the hurry of business; clerks passed and came with sheaves of
correspondence in their hands; and Wannamaker himself, rising from
bending over a message which he was correcting on one of the
typewriters' tables, saw the newcomer and led him to the private office.

"What is it?" said Lestrange.

"Only this," said the other, taking up a slip of paper with a name and
address on it. "Simon J. Fo