ital of
the country for which he had shed his blood.

On the day following his arrival he dined alone at a military club. He
shook hands with a few old comrades, and received their warm
congratulations; but as one and all had some engagement for the evening,
he found himself left entirely to his own resources. He was in dress,
for he had entertained the notion of visiting a theatre. But the great
city was new to him; he had gone from a provincial school to a military
college, and thence direct to the Eastern Empire; and he promised
himself a variety of delights in this world for exploration. Swinging
his cane, he took his way westward. It was a mild evening, already dark,
and now and then threatening rain. The succession of faces in the
lamplight stirred the Lieutenant's imagination; and it seemed to him as
if he could walk for ever in that stimulating city atmosphere and
surrounded by the mystery of four million private lives. He glanced at
the houses, and marvelled what was passing behind those warmly-lighted
windows; he looked into face after face, and saw them each intent upon
some unknown interest, criminal or kindly.

"They talk of war," he thought, "but this is the great battlefield of
mankind."

And then he began to wonder that he should walk so long in this
complicated scene, and not chance upon so much as the shadow of an
adventure for himself.

"All in good time," he reflected. "I am still a stranger, and perhaps
wear a strange air. But I must be drawn into the eddy before long."

The night was already well advanced when a plump of cold rain fell
suddenly out of the darkness. Brackenbury paused under some trees, and
as he did so he caught sight of a hansom cabman making him a sign that
he was disengaged. The circumstance fell in so happily to the occasion
that he at once raised his cane in answer, and had soon ensconced
himself in the London gondola.

"Where to, sir?" asked the driver.

"Where you please," said Brackenbury.

And immediately, at a pace of surprising swiftness, the hansom drove off
through the rain into a maze of villas. One villa was so like another,
each with its front garden, and there was so little to distinguish the
deserted lamp-lit streets and crescents through which the flying hansom
took its way, that Brackenbury soon lost all idea of direction. He would
have been tempted to believe that the cabman was amusing himself by
driving him round and round and in and out about a smal