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"Heavens--he left Bora-Bora, going east, two days before I dropped anchor bound west on my way to Samoa I came out of Apia, with letters for him from the American consul, the day before he came in Wethe Wild Duck then He pulled out of Suva as guest on a British cruiser Sir Everard Iave me more letters for Graham I missed him at Port Resolution and at Vila in the New Hebrides The cruiser was junketing, you see I beat her in and out of the Santa Cruz Group It was the sa the cannibal villages at Langa-Langa, stea I sailed in that afternoon I never did deliver those letters in person, and the next time I laid eyes on hio"

"But who about him, and what about him?" Paula queried "And what's the book?"

"Well, first of all, beginning at the end, he's broke--that is, for hiot an income of several thousand a year left, but all that his father left hiot in deep, and the 'silent panic' several years ago just about cleaned hiood stuff, old American stock, a Yale man The book--he expects to make a bit on it--covers last year's trip across South Around The Brazilian government voluntarily voted him a honorariuht out concerning unexplored portions of Brazil Oh, he's a oods You know the type--clean, big, strong, si, knows ht, square, looks you in the eyes--well, in short, a , ht, and exclaily

"Oh, nothing in that direction, Ernestine Just as nice girls as you have tried to hook Evan Graham before now And, between ourselves, I couldn't blas, and they've always failed to run hiet him into a corner, where, dazed and breathless, he's atories and come out of the trance to find hiet hiolden apples Pick the a noise like stupid failure all the tied youth But Graha He's old like e--and, like me, he's run a lot of those queer races He kno to et-away He's been cut by barbed wire, nose-twitched, neck-burnt, cinched to a fare-you-well, and he res In fact, you uilty, by proxy, that he is merely old, hard bitten, and very wise"