it is best to make sure of your ground, in a measure, at least, before
taking too much for granted--to look before you leap, so to speak. And
so, his mind tingling with visions of fair ladies and goodly
opportunities, he went to sleep--and did not get up to breakfast until
noon the next day.

And now it becomes my deplorable duty to divulge the fact that Truxton
King, after two full days and nights in the city of Edelweiss, was quite
ready to pass on to other fields, completely disillusionised in his own
mind, and not a little disgusted with himself for having gone to the
trouble to visit the place. To his intense chagrin, he had found the
quaint old city very tiresome. True, it was a wonderful old town, rich
in tradition, picturesque in character, hoary with age, bulging with
the secrets of an active past; but at present, according to the well
travelled Truxton, it was a poky old place about which historians either
had lied gloriously or had been taken in shamelessly. In either case,
Edelweiss was not what he had come to believe it would be. He had
travelled overland for nearly a month, out of the heart of Asia, to find
himself, after all, in a graveyard of great expectations!

He had explored Edelweiss, the capital. He had ridden about the
ramparts; he had taken snapshots of the fortress down the river and had
not been molested; he had gone mule-back up the mountain to the
snowcapped monastery of St. Valentine, overtopping and overlooking the
green valleys below; he had seen the tower in which illustrious
prisoners were reported to have been held; he had ridden over the King's
Road to Ganlook and had stood on American bridges at midnight--all the
while wondering why he was there. Moreover, he had traversed the narrow,
winding streets of the city by day and night; never, in all his travels,
had he encountered a more peaceful, less spirit-stirring place or