which his clouded reputation had stopped the way to his advancement
in the English Secret Service, he remembered, even at the last,
that a few letters were due to those who still watched his little
flickering light on its way over the trackless sea of life. For
hard-hearted as he was,--benumbed by the blows of fate, his heart
calloused with the snapping of cords and ties which once had
closely bound him--there were yet loosely knit bonds of the past
which tinged with the glow of his dying passions--the unforgotten
idols of his adventurous career!

He rose and walked mechanically along the Qua du Mont Blanc with
the alert, springy step of the soldier. "Once a Captain, always
a Captain" was in every line of his resolute, martial figure. His
well-set-up, graceful form, his nobly poised head and easy soldierly
bearing contrasted sharply with the lazy shuffle of the prosperous
Swiss denizens and the listless lolling of the sporadic foreign
tourists. Crisp, curling, tawny hair, a sweeping soldierly moustache,
with a resolute chin and gleaming blue eyes accentuated a handsome
face burnt to a dark olive by the fiery Indian sun. An easy insouciance
tempered the habitual military smartness of the man who had known
several different services in the fifteen years of his wasted young
manhood. As he swung into the glare of the hospitable doorway of the
Grand Rational, the obsequious head porter doffed his gold banded
cap.

"Table d'hote serving now, Major!" With the mere social instinct of
long years, Alan Hawke recognized the man's perfunctory politeness,
tipped him a couple of francs, and then, mechanically sauntered to
a seat in the superb salle a manger. "I'll get out of here to-night,"
he muttered, and then he bent down his head over the carte du jour