This put him into such bad odour with his family that he hurried off to the dogs--and a goodly sized menagerie besides, if the records of the inebriate's asylum are to be credited.
His wife, after enduring him for sixteen years, secured a divorce.

It may not have been intended as an insult to the scapegoat, but no sooner had she freed herself from him than his father, Sir Somebody-or-other, took her and her young daughter into the ancestral halls and gave them a much-needed abiding-place.

This left poor Mr.Jack quite completely out in the world--and he proceeded to make the best and the worst of it while he had the strength and ambition.

Accepting the world as his home, he ventured forth to visit every nook and cranny of it.

In course of time he came upon his old-time neighbour and boyhood friend, Taswell Skaggs, in the city of Shanghai.