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Rh my fren', for a miniature—as far as Bokhara—and there is so much more there." He bowed to the canvas, then stood up. "Can you unravel me your railroads?"

"That's easy. Here's a time-table. The New Haven will take you there, if it chances to be its wreckless day."

"Wrecks are always my good fortune, my bad that always I survive them."

He started for the door, but was called back by his jovial friend.

"Hey there, now get this straight,—from Bunker Wharf you turn to Water Street, then two turns to the right and three to the left, up the hill. House, French windows—whitewashed trees, walk, shells, whitewashed everything—skiff groaning with flowers—and—name's Sally."

The other looked at him with a twinkle of amusement.

"Crude, as you say in your expressive American, but au revoir."

As he had judged from the picture and his friend's portrayal, the town was like the other his boyhood remembered, with roofs sloping to the harbour, but neither so gayly coloured nor sheltering so joyous a life. And this sky was blue yet not quite so blue, if he trusted his fancy.

Other pictures came back to him,—his proud testy old granduncle, tall and silver-haired, hawk-eyed and hawk-nosed, and Bourbon to the backbone, who, ever since the last Napoleon, had locked himself in his château and gardens, sternly refusing to recognize the new order by even so much as mingling with it, while his estate dwindled to a third of its former glory and, what was more to the point, to even less