That the man has not his own easy-going vices just as alive and masterful as the base appetites of the swell master." While Alan Hawke thus exulted at Granville, there was gloom and jealousy in the heart of Prof.Alaric Hobbs, of Waukesha University, Wisconsin, U.S.A.
A tall, lank, bespectacled "Westerner," nearly thirty-five years of age, the blue-eyed country boy had dragged himself up from the obscurity of a frontier American farm into the higher life.

Uncouth, awkward, and yet resolute and untiring, he had justified his first instructor's prediction: "He has the head of a horse, and will make his mark!" Newspaper trainboy, chainman, assistant on Government frontier surveys, and frontier scout, he early saved his money so as to complete a sporadic university curriculum.

A trip to Liberia, a dash down into Mexico, and a desert jaunt in Australia, had not satisfied his craving for adventure.
With the results of two years of professional lectures, he was now imbibing continental experiences, and plotting a bicycle "scientific tour of the world." Hard-headed, fearless, devoted, and sincere, he was a mad theorist in all his mental processes, and had tried, proved, and rejected free love, anarchy, Christian science, and a dozen other feverish fads, which for a time jangled his mental bells out of tune.
A cranky tracing of the lost Ten Tribes of Israel down to the genial scalpers of the American plains had thrown him across the renowned Professor Andrew Fraser, who had, on his part, located these same long mourned Hebrews in Thibet, ignoring the fact that they are really dispersed in the United States of America as "eaters of other men's hard-made 'honey'" in the "drygoods," clothing, and "shent per shent" line.

For, a glance at the signs on Broadway will prove to any one that the "lost" have been found in Gotham.
Smoking his corncob pipe the Professor paced his rooms at the Royal Victoria, and mentally consigned Prince Djiddin and his indefatigable Moonshee to Eblis, the Inferno, Sheol, or some other ardent corner of Limbo.

"How long will these two yellow fellows keep poor old Fraser enchanted ?" mused the disgruntled American, mindful of his hotel bill running on.