the smile touched Blake anew. He laughed involuntarily with a sudden sense of friendliness.

"Sixteen?—seventeen?"

The boy, still smiling, shook his head.

"Guess again, monsieur."

Blake's interest flashed out. Here, in the gray station, in this damp hour of dawn, he had touched something magnetic—some force that drew and held him. A quality intangible and indescribable seemed to emanate from this unknown boy, some strange radiance of vitality that flooded his surroundings as with sunshine.

"Eighteen, then!" He laughed once more, with a curious sense of pleasure.

But from the corridor outside a slow voice was borne back on the damp, close air, forbidding further parley.

"Blake! I say, Blake! For the Lord's sake, get a move on!"

The spell was broken, the moment of companionship passed. Blake drifted toward the carriage door, the boy following.

Outside in the corridor they were sucked into the stream of departing passengers—that odd medley of men and women, unadorned, jaded, careless, that a night train disgorges. Slowly, step by step, the procession made its way, each unit that composed it glancing involuntarily into the empty carriages that he passed—the carriages that, in their dimmed light, their airlessness, their débris of papers, seemed to be a reflection of his own exhausted condition; then a gust of chilly air told of the outer world, and one by one the travellers slid through the narrow doorway, each instinctively pausing to brace himself against the biting cold before stepping down upon the platform.

At last it was Blake's turn. He, too, paused; then he, too, took the final plunge, shivered, glanced at where McCutcheon and the Englishman were talking to their porters, then turned to watch the Russian boy swing himself lithely down from the high step of the train.

All about him was the consciousness of the awakening crowd, conveyed by the jostling of elbows, the deepening hum of voices.

"Look here!" he said again, in response to his original impulse. "You have somebody to meet you?"

The boy glanced up, a secret emotion burning in his eyes. "No, monsieur."

"You are quite alone?"

"Yes, monsieur."

"And why are you here—to play or to work?"

The question was unwarrantable, but an Irishman can dispense with warranty in a manner unknown to other men. It had ever been Blake's way to ask what he desired to know.

This time no offence showed itself in the boy's face.

"In part to work, in part to play, monsieur," he answered, gravely; "in part to learn life."

The reply was strange to Blake's ears—strange in its grave sincerity, stranger still in its quiet fearlessness.

"But you are such a child!" he cried, impulsively. "You—"

Imperceptibly the slight figure stiffened, the proud look flashed again into the eyes.

"Many thanks, monsieur, but I am older than you think—and very independent. I have the honor monsieur, to wish you good-bye."

The tone was absolutely courteous, but it was final. He bowed with easy foreign grace, raised his fur cap, and, turning, swung down the platform and out of sight.

Blake stood watching him—watching until the high head, the straight shoulders, the lithe, swinging body were but a memory; then he turned with a start, as a hand was laid upon his shoulder, and the pleasant, prosaic voice of the young Englishman assailed his ears.

"My dear chap, what in the world are you doing? Not day-dreaming with the mercury at thirty?"

"Foolish—but I was!" Blake answered, calmly. "I was watching that young Russian stalk away into the unknown, and I was wondering—"

"What?"

He smiled a little cynically. "I was wondering, Billy, what type of individual and what particular process fate will choose to let him break himself upon."

The most splendid moment of an adventure is not always the moment of fulfilment, not even the moment of conception, but the moment of first accomplishment, when the adventurer deliberately sets his face toward the new road, knowing that his boats are burned.

Nothing could have been less inspiring than the dreary Gare du Nord, nothing less inviting than the glimpse of Paris to be caught through its open doorways; but had the whole world laughed him a welcome, the young Russian's step could not have been more elastic, his courage higher, his heart more ready to pulse to the quick march of his thoughts, as he strode down the gray platform and out into the open.

In the open he paused to study his surroundings. As yet the full tale of passengers had not emerged, and only an occasional wayfarer, devoid of baggage as himself, had fared forth into the gloom. Outside, the artificial light of the station ceased to do battle with nature, and only an occasional street lamp gave challenge to the gloomy dawn. The damp mist that all night had enshrouded Paris still clung about the streets like ragged grave-clothes, and at the edge of the pavement half a dozen fiacres were ranged in a melancholy line, the wretched horses dozing as they stood, the drivers huddled into their fur capes and numbed by the clinging cold. Everywhere was darkness and chill and the listless misery of a winter dawn, when vitality is at its lowest ebb and the passions of man are sunk in lethargy.

Only a creature infinitely young could have held firm in face of such dejection, only eyes as alert and wakeful as those of this wayfaring boy could possibly have looked undaunted at the shabby streets with their flaunting travesty of joy exhibited in the dripping awnings of the deserted cafés, that offered Bière, Billard, and yet again Bière to an impassive world.

But the eyes were wakeful, the soul of the adventurer was infinitely young. He looked at it all with a certain steadfastness that seemed to say, "Yes, I see you! You are hideous, slatternly, unfriendly; but through all the disguise I recognize you. Through the mask I trace the features—subtle, alluring, fascinating. You are Paris! Paris!"

The idea quickened action as a draught of wine might quicken thought; his hand involuntarily tightened upon his valise, his body braced itself afresh, and, as if resigning himself finally to chance, that deity loved of all true adventurers, he stepped from the pavement into the greasy roadway.

Seeing him move, a loafer, crouching in the shadow of the station, slunk reluctantly into the open and offered to procure him a fiacre; but the boy's shake of the head was determined, and, crossing the road, he turned to the left, gazing up with eager interest at the many hotels that rub shoulders in that uninteresting region.

One after the other he reviewed and rejected them, moving onward with the excitement that is born of absolute uncertainty. Onward he went, without pause, until the pavement was intersected by a side-street, and peering up through the misty light he read the legend, "rue de Dunkerque."

Rue de Dunkerque! It conveyed nothing to his mind. But was he not seeking the unknown? Again his head went up, again his shoulders stiffened, and, smiling to himself at some secret thought, he swung round the corner and plunged into the unexplored.

Half way down the rue de Dunkerque stands the Hôtel Railleux. It is a tall and narrow house, somewhat dirty and entirely undistinguished; there is nothing to recommend it save perhaps an air of privacy, a certain insignificance that wedges it between the surrounding buildings in a manner tempting to one anxious to avoid his fellows.

This quality it was that caught the boy's attention. He paused and studied the Hôtel Railleux with an attention that he had denied to the large and common hostelries that front the station. He looked at it long and meditatively, then very slowly and thoughtfully he walked to the end of the street. At the end of the street he turned, his mind made up, and, hurrying back, went straight into the hall of the hotel as though thirsting to