d as he read of this and of the frightened exit of that
puny usurper before the mere rumour of his approach. Then that audacious
staking of all on a throw of the dice--Waterloo and a deathless
ignominy. He heard the sob-choked voices of the Old Guard as they bade
their leader farewell--felt the despairing clasp of their hands!

Alone in his little room, high above the flaring night streets, the
timid boy read of the Hundred Days, and thrilled to a fancied memory of
them. The breath that checked on his lips, the blood that ran faster in
his veins at the recital, went to nourish a body that contained the
essential part of that hero--he was reading about himself! He forgot his
mean surroundings--and the timidities of spirit that had brought him
thus far through life almost with the feelings of a fugitive.

The Lords of Destiny had found him indeed untractable as the great
Emperor, the world-figure, and, for his proudness of spirit, had decreed
that he should affrightedly tread the earth again as Bunker Bean.
Everything pointed to it. Even the golden bees of Napoleon! Were there
not three B's in his own name? The shameful truth is that he had been
christened "Bunker Bunker Bean." His fond and foolish mother had thus
ingenuously sought to placate the two old Uncle Bunkers; unsuccessfully,
be it added, for each had affected to believe that he took second place
in the name. But the three B's were there; did they not point
psychically to the golden bees of the Corsican? Indeed, an astrologist
in Chicago had once told him, for a paltry half-dollar, that those B's
in his name were of a profoundly mystic significance.

Again, he was of distinguished French origin. Over and over had his
worried mother sought to impress this upon him. The family was an old
and noble one, fleeing from France, during a Huguenot persecution, to
Protestant England where the true name "de Boncoeur" had been corrupted
to "Bunker." At the time of his earliest dissatisfaction with the name
he had even essayed writing it in the French manner--"B. de Boncoeur
Bien"--supposing "Bien" to be approximate French for "Bean."

What more natural than that the freed soul, striving for another body,
should have selected one of distinguished French ancestry? The commoner
would inevitably seek to become a patrician.

It was a big thing; a thing to dream and wonder and calculate about.
When he was puzzled or disturbed he would resort to the shell--a thing
he had clung