wanderings in strange lands--and these he had frequently
told her about before. Soon she perceived, however,
that he was stringing them together on a new thread.
One after another, these experiences of his, as he
related them, turned upon the obstacles and fatal pitfalls
which treachery and malice had put in his path. He seemed,
by his account, to have been a hundred times almost
within touch of the goal. In China, in the Dutch Indies,
in those remoter parts of Australia which were a waterless
waste when he knew them and might have owned them,
and now were yielding fabulous millions to fellows who
had tricked and swindled him--everywhere he had missed
by just a hair's breadth the golden consummation.
In the Western hemisphere the tale repeated itself.
There had been times in the Argentine, in Brazil just before
the Empire fell, in Colorado when the Silver boom was on,
in British Columbia when the first rumours of rich ore
were whispered about--many times when fortune seemed
veritably within his grasp. But someone had always
played him false. There was never a friendship for him
which could withstand the temptation of profitable treason.

But he had hung dauntlessly on. He had seen one concession
slipping through his fingers, only to strain and tighten
them for a clutch at another. It did not surprise
his hearer--nor indeed did it particularly attract
her attention--that there was nowhere in this rapid and
comprehensive narrative any allusion to industry of the
wage-earning sort. Apparently, he had done no work at all,
in the bread-winner's sense of the word. This was so like