tints of the setting
sun--open doors--an ancient coach disgorging its passengers! This--or, perhaps, some quay alive with sound and movement--cries of command in varying tongues--crowded gangways--rigging massed against the sky--all the paraphernalia of romance and travel. But the real journey--the journey of adventure itself--is frequently another matter: often gray, often loverless, often demanding from the secret soul of the adventurer spirit and inspiration, lest the blood turn cold in sick dismay, and the brain cloud under its weight of nostalgia.

Paris in the dawn of a wet day is a sorry sight; the Gare du Nord in the hours of early morning is a place of infinite gloom. As the north express thundered into its recesses, waking strange and hollow echoes, the long sweep of the platform brought a shudder to more than one tired mind. A string of sleepy porters--gray silhouettes against a gray background--was the only sign of life. Colors there were none, lovers there were none, Parisian joy of living there was not one vestige.

Paris! The murmur crept through the train, stirring the weariest to mechanical action. Paris! Heads were thrust through the windows, wraps and hand-bags passed out to the shadowy, mysterious porters who received them in a silence born of the godless hour and the penetrating, chilling dampness of the atmosphere. In the carriage fifth or sixth from the engine the three fellow-travellers greeted the arrival in the orthodox way. The tall American stretched his long limbs and groaned wearily as he got his belongings together, while the dapper young Englishman thrust his head out of the window and withdrew it as rapidly. "Beastly morning!" he announced. "Paris on a wet day is like a woman with draggled skirts." "Get rid of our belongings first, Billy, make epigrams after!" The man called Blake pushed him quietly aside and, stepping to the window, dropped a leather bag into the hands of a porter. Of the three, his manner was the most indifferent, his temper the most unruffled; and of the three, he alone remembered the fourth occupant of the carriage, for, being relieved of his bag, he turned with his hand still upon the window, and his eyes sought the youthful figure drawn with lonely isolation into its corner. "Do you want a porter?" he asked. The question was unexpected. The boy started and sat straighter in his seat. For one moment he seemed to sway between two impulses, then, with a new determination, he looked straight at his questioner with his clear eyes. "No," he said, speaking slowly and with a grave deliberation, "I do not need a porter. I have no luggage--but this." He rose, as if to prove the truth of his declaration, and 

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