He had staked much upon a little campaign at the Foreign Office in London.

The cold rebuff which he had received to there had carried him in sheer desperation over to Monaro and incoming onto Geneva, he had "burned his ships" behind him.

Ignorant of the precise manner in which his clouded reputation had stopped the way to his advancement in the English Secret Service, he remembered, even at the last, that a few letters were due to those who still watched his little flickering light on its way over the trackless sea of life.
For hard-hearted as he was,--benumbed by the blows of fate, his heart calloused with the snapping of cords and ties which once had closely bound him--there were yet loosely knit bonds of the past which tinged with the glow of his dying passions--the unforgotten idols of his adventurous career! He rose and walked mechanically along the Qua du Mont Blanc with the alert, springy step of the soldier.

"Once a Captain, always a Captain" was in every line of his resolute, martial figure.

His well-set-up, graceful form, his nobly poised head and easy soldierly bearing contrasted sharply with the lazy shuffle of the prosperous Swiss denizens and the listless lolling of the sporadic foreign tourists.
Crisp, curling, tawny hair, a sweeping soldierly moustache, with a resolute chin and gleaming blue eyes accentuated a handsome face burnt to a dark olive by the fiery Indian sun.