curiosity of the qui hais. For a week he lingered in the "City of
God," and daily haunted the post and telegraph offices.

He had sent on to the Delhi Club a note for the maw of the local
gossips, and also had dispatched a skillfully constructed letter
to the unsuspecting Hugh Johnstone. With a veiled flattery of the
old civilian's wisdom and experience, he referred to his desire to
consult him as to a secret journey in the direction of the Pamirs.
The opportune windfall of Anstruther's ecarte and Berthe Louison's
liberal advance enabled Major Alan Hawke to maintain a dignified and
easy port as he wandered through Allahabad. Strolling by the waters
of the Ganges and Jumna, he invoked anew the blessings of the
goddess Fortuna, as he gazed out upon the majestic heaven descended
stream. The daily tide of travel toward Delhi brought on each day
some familiar faces, and yet Alan Hawke lingered gently, declining
their traveling company. "Waiting orders," he said, with the sad,
sweet smile of one enjoying a sinecure. His swelling outward port
thoroughly proved that the days were gone when he was to be scanned
before the morning salutation. Les eaux sout basses, the impecunious
Frenchman mourns, but there was a swelling tide bearing Alan Hawke
onward now.

A hearty welcoming letter from the ci-devant Hugh Fraser was
a good omen, for rumor of a thousand tongues had already invested
the returning Major with an important secret mission. His epistolary
seed planted in Delhi had brought forth fruit as rapidly as the
magic of the Indian conjuror's mango-tree trick. It was already
rumored even in Allahabad that "Hawke had dropped upon a decidedly
good thing." The Major was busied, however, in analyzing the motives
of Alixe Delavigne, in her change of name, her separate journey,