the elder, Charles Herne, a Western gentleman of some literary
attainments, but comparatively unknown here in the East. There is
nothing about Mr. Herne that would challenge more than passing
attention. If you had said of him, "He is well-fleshed, well-groomed,
and intellectually well-thatched," you would have voiced the opinion
of most of his acquaintances.

This somewhat elaborately upholstered old world has a deal of mere
filling of one kind and another, and Mr. Herne is a part of it. To
be sure, he leaves the category of excelsior very far behind and
approaches very nearly to the best grade of curled hair, but, in
spite of all this, he is simply a sort of social filling.

Mr. Browne, on the other hand, is a very different personage. Of
medium height, closely knit, with the latent activity and grace of
the cat flowing through every movement and even stagnating in his
pose, he is a man that the first casual gaze instantly returns to
with sharpened focus. You have seen gymnasts whose normal movements
were slowly performed springs, just as rust is a slow combustion and
fire the same thing in less time. Well, Clinton Browne strongly
suggested that sort of athlete. Add to this a regularly formed,
clearly cut, and all-but-beautiful face, with a pair of wonderfully
piercing, albeit somewhat shifty, black eyes, and one need not marvel
that men as well as women stared at him. I have spoken of his gaze
as "somewhat shifty," yet am not altogether sure that in that term
I accurately describe it. What first fastened my attention was this
vague, unfocussed, roving, quasi-introspective vision flashing with
panther-like suddenness into a directness that seemed to burn and
pierce one like the thrust of a hot stiletto, His face was
clean-shaven, save for a mere thumb-mark of black hair directly