belief that his luck will change, and that by some vagary of fortune he will come up again smiling. Hope is never dead within the ruined man.

By dint of some careful questions I tried to obtain further information regarding this confident hope of wealth which he entertained, but he would tell me nothing—absolutely nothing.

He accepted a cigar after he had dined well, took brandy with his coffee, and smoked with the air of a contented man who had no single thought or care in the world—a man who knew exactly what the future held for him.

Thus, from the very first, Burton Blair was a mystery. On rejoining Mabel we found her sleeping peacefully, utterly fagged out. Therefore I induced him to remain beneath my roof that night, in order that she might rest, and, returning to the dining-room, her father and I sat together smoking and talking for several hours.

He told me of his hard, rough years at sea, of strange adventures in savage lands, of a narrow escape from death at the hands of a band of natives in the Cameroons, and of how, for three years, he acted as captain of a river-steamer up the Congo, one of the pioneers of civilisation. He related his thrilling adventures calmly and naturally, without any bragging, but just in that plain, matter-of-fact manner which revealed to me that he was one of those men who love an adventurous life because of its perils and its vicissitudes.

“And now I’m tramping the turnpikes of England,” he added, laughing. “You must, no doubt, think it very strange, Mr Greenwood, but to tell you the truth I am actively prosecuting a rather curious quest, the successful issue of which will one day bring me wealth beyond my wildest dreams. See!” he added, with a strange wild look in his great dark eyes, as swiftly undoing his blue guernsey and delving beneath it he drew forth a square, flat piece of soiled and well-worn chamois leather in which there seemed to be sewed some precious document or other. “Look! My secret lies here. Some day I shall discover the key to it—maybe to-morrow or next day, or next year. When, it is quite immaterial. The result will be the same. My years of continuous search and travel will be rewarded—and I shall be rich, and the world will wonder!” And, laughing contentedly, almost triumphantly within himself, he carefully replaced his precious document in his chest, and, rising, stood with his back to the fire in the attitude of a man entirely confident of what was written in the Book of Fate.

That midnight scene in all its 

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