buff which he had received
to there had carried him in sheer desperation over to Monaro and
incoming onto Geneva, he had "burned his ships" behind him. Ignorant of
the precise manner in which his clouded reputation had stopped the way
to his advancement in the English Secret Service, he remembered, even
at the last, that a few letters were due to those who still watched his
little flickering light on its way over the trackless sea of life.
For hard-hearted as he was,--benumbed by the blows of fate, his heart
calloused with the snapping of cords and ties which once had closely
bound him--there were yet loosely knit bonds of the past which tinged
with the glow of his dying passions--the unforgotten idols of his
adventurous career!

He rose and walked mechanically along the Qua du Mont Blanc with the
alert, springy step of the soldier. "Once a Captain, always a Captain"
was in every line of his resolute, martial figure. His well-set-up,
graceful form, his nobly poised head and easy soldierly bearing
contrasted sharply with the lazy shuffle of the prosperous Swiss
denizens and the listless lolling of the sporadic foreign tourists.
Crisp, curling, tawny hair, a sweeping soldierly moustache, with a
resolute chin and gleaming blue eyes accentuated a handsome face burnt
to a dark olive by the fiery Indian sun. An easy insouciance tempered
the habitual military smartness of the man who had known several
different services in the fifteen years of his wasted young manhood. As
he swung into the glare of the hospitable doorway of the Grand Rational,
the obsequious head porter doffed his gold banded cap.

"Table d'hote serving now, Major!" With the mere social instinct of long
years, Alan Hawke recognized the man's perfunctory politeness, tipped
him a couple of francs, and then, mechanically sauntered to a seat in
the superb salle a manger. "I'll get out of here to-night," he muttered,
and then he bent down his head over the carte du jour and peered at the
wine list, as the chatter of happy voices, the animated faces of lovely
women and the eager hum of social life around, recalled him to that
world from which he contemplated an unceremonious exit. It was in a
deference to old habit, and the "qu en dira't on," that he ordered a
half bottle of excellent Chambertin and then proceeded to dine with all
the scrupulous punctilio of the old happy mess days.

Something of defiance seemed to steal back into his veins with the
generous warm