showed him only too clearly that in forty years it had grown away
from him, had changed beyond recognition.

When last he had called at the State Department, he had been made
to feel he was a man without a country, and when he visited his
home town in Vermont, he was looked upon as a Rip Van Winkle. Those
of his boyhood friends who were not dead had long thought of him as
dead. And the sleepy, pretty village had become a bustling
commercial centre. In the lanes where, as a young man, he had
walked among wheatfields, trolley-cars whirled between rows of
mills and factories. The children had grown to manhood, with
children of their own.

Like a ghost, he searched for house after house, where once he had
been made welcome, only to find in its place a towering office
building. "All had gone, the old familiar faces." In vain he
scanned even the shop fronts for a friendly, homelike name. Whether
the fault was his, whether he would better have served his own
interests than those of his government, it now was too late to
determine. In his own home, he was a stranger among strangers. In
the service he had so faithfully followed, rank by rank, he had
been dropped, until now he, who twice had been a consul-general,
was an exile, banished to a fever swamp. The great Ship of State
had dropped him overside, had "marooned" him, and sailed away.

Twice a day he walked along the shell road to the Cafe Bolivar, and
back again to the consulate. There, as he entered the outer office,
Jose" the Colombian clerk, would rise and bow profoundly.

"Any papers for me to sign, Jose? " the consul would ask.