The story of Hatch's life was a simple one.

He had married in his twenty-second year a wife a year younger than himself, and together the couple had settled down upon an estate which Hatch owned in Devonshire.

Only a year after the marriage, however, Hatch's wife died, and he, disliking his home, had gone restlessly abroad.

The restlessness had grown, a certain taste for Oriental literature and thought had been fostered by his travels.

He had become a wanderer upon the face of the earth--a man of many clubs in different quarters of the world, and of many friends, who had come to look upon his unexpected appearance and no less sudden departure as part of the ordinary tenour of their lives.