well-ordered dinner. "These human pawns seem to be all prosperous,
if not happy! I'll have another shy at it! By God! I must get back
to India!" The whole checkered past rushed back over his mind! The
fifteen years of his "wanderjahre"! Scenes which even he dared not
recall! Incidents which he had never dared to own to any European!
He but too well knew the origin of his loosely applied title of
Major--a field officer's rank more honored at the easygoing clubs
of Yokahama, Shanghai, and Hong Kong than on the Army List--a rank
best known at the ring-side of Indian sporting grounds, and only
tacitly accepted in the extra-official circles of Hindustan. For it
figured not in the official Army List, either as active or retired.
The whole panorama of the mystic land of the Hindus was unrolled
once more by the memories of fifteen clouded years, He saw again
his far-away theater of varied action, with its huge grim mountains
towering far over the snow line, its arid wastes, its fertile plains
bathed in intense sunshine, its mystic rivers, and its silent,
solemn shrines of the vanished gods.

Major Alan Hawke silently ran over his slender professional
accomplishments. "I'm not too heavy to ride yet. I've a fair hand
at cards--tough nerves, and even a bit of staying power. Luck may
turn my way yet and there's always the Pamirs! At the worst, the
Russians--the Afghans,--or those fellows up in Sikkim and Hill
Tipperah! An artillerist is always welcome there!" But even in his
moral desperation, he hung his head, for a flush of his boyhood's
bright ambitions returned to shame him. An old song jingled in his
memory, "When I first put this uniform on." He lapsed into a bitter
reverie!

The soldier of fortune was finally aroused from a brown study by