He lighted a cigar and settled himself in an easy chair before the fire, glad of the luxury of peace and quiet after his circuitous journey and the tumult of doubt and question that had shaken him.
He slit the wrapper of the Washington newspaper that Oscar had brought from the mountain post-office and scanned the head-lines.

He read with care a dispatch from London that purported to reflect the sentiment of the continental capitals toward Charles Louis, the new Emperor-king of Austria-Hungary, and the paper dropped upon his knees and he stared into the fire.

Then he picked up a paper of earlier date and read all the foreign despatches and the news of Washington.

He was about to toss the paper aside, when his eyes fell upon a boldly-headlined article that caused his heart to throb fiercely.

It recited the sudden reappearance of the fraudulent Baron von Kissel in Washington, and described in detail the baron's escapades at Bar Harbor and his later career in California and elsewhere.