The brief days of his service in India, an abrupt exit from the
service, long years of wandering in Japan and China, as a gentleman
adventurer, and all the singular phases of a nomadic life in Burmah,
Nepaul, Cashmere, Bhootan, and the Pamirs.
He smiled in derision at the recollection of a briefly flattering
fortune which had rebaptized him with a shadowy title of uncertain
origin. Thus far, his visiting card, "Major Alan Hawke, Bombay Club"
had been an easily vised passport, but--alas--good only among his
own kind! He was but a free lance of the polished "Detrimentals,"
and, under this last adverse stroke of fortune, his poor cockboat
was being swamped in the black waters of adversity. He had staked
much upon a little campaign at the Foreign Office in London.
The cold rebuff which he had received to there had carried him in
sheer desperation over to Monaro and incoming onto Geneva, he had
"burned his ships" behind him. Ignorant of the precise manner in
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.
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