BOOK I. OUT OF THE DEAD PAST.

CHAPTER I.

A CHANCE MEETING AT GENEVA.





"By Jove! I may as well make an end of the thing right here to-night!"
was the dejected conclusion of a long council of war over which
Major Alan Hawke had presided, with the one straggling comfort of
being its only member.

All this long September afternoon he had dawdled away in feeding
certain rapacious swans navigating gracefully around Rousseau's
Island. He had consumed several Trichinopoly cigars in the interval,
and had moodily gazed back upon the strange path which had led him
to the placid shores of Lake Leman! The gay promenaders envied the
debonnair-looking young Briton, whose outer man was essentially
"good form." Children left the side of their ox-eyed bonnes to
challenge the handsome young stranger with shy, friendly approaches.

Bevies of flashing-eyed American girls "took him in" with parthian
glances, and even a widowed Russian princess, hobbling by, easing
her gouty steps with a jeweled cane, gazed back upon the moody