I

RHAMDA AVEC


On a certain foggy morning in September, 1905, a tall man wearing
a black overcoat and bearing in one hand a small satchel of dark-
reddish leather descended from a Geary Street tram at the foot of
Market Street, San Francisco. It was a damp morning; a mist was
brooding over the city blurring all distinctness.

The man glanced about him; a tall man of trim lines and
distinctness and a quick, decided step and bearing. In the shuffle
of descending passengers he was outstanding, with a certain inborn
grace that without the blood will never come from training. Men
noticed and women out of instinct cast curious furtive glances and
then turned away; which was natural, inasmuch as the man was
plainly old. But for all that many ventured a second glance--and
wondered.

An old man with the poise of twenty, a strange face of remarkable
features, swarthy, of an Eastern cast, perhaps Indian; whatever
the certainty of the man's age there was still a lingering
suggestion of splendid youth. If one persisted in a third or
fourth look this suggestion took an almost certain tone, the man's
age dwindled, years dropped from him, and the quizzical smile that