The Project Gutenberg EBook of Graustark, by George Barr McCutcheon

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Title: Graustark

Author: George Barr McCutcheon

Release Date: February, 2004 [EBook #5142]
Posting Date: March 30, 2009

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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GRAUSTARK

By George Barr McCutcheon

I. MR. GRENFALL LORRY SEEKS ADVENTURE

Mr. Grenfall Lorry boarded the east-bound express at Denver with all the
air of a martyr. He had traveled pretty much all over the world, and
he was not without resources, but the prospect of a twenty-five hundred
mile journey alone filled him with dismay. The country he knew; the
scenery had long since lost its attractions for him; countless newsboys
had failed to tempt him with the literature they thrust in his face, and
as for his fellow-passengers--well, he preferred to be alone. And so it
was that he gloomily motioned the porter to his boxes and mounted the
steps with weariness.

As it happened, Mr. Grenfall Lorry did not have a dull moment after the
train started.

He stumbled on a figure that leaned toward the window in the dark
passageway. With reluctant civility he apologized; a lady stood up to
let him pass, and for an instant in the half light their eyes met, and
that is why the miles rushed by with incredible speed.

Mr. Lorry had been dawdling away the months in Mexico and California.
For years he had felt, together with many other people, that a
sea-voyage was the essential beginning of every journey; he had started
round the world soon after leaving Cambridge; he had fished through
Norway and hunted in India, and shot everything from grouse on the
Scottish moors to the rapids above Assouan. He had run in and out of
countless towns and countries on the coast of South America; he had done
Russia and the Rhone valley and Brittany and Damascus; he had seen
them all--but not until then did it occur to him that there might be
something of interest nearer home. True he had thought of joining
some Englishmen on a hunting tour in the Rockies, but that had fallen
through. When the idea of Mexico did occur to him he gav