Strange was a good many things but he was above all others a traveller, he had neither nerves nor stomach, which is proof sufficient that he had been preordained to the _rôle_, and he had discovered his election very early in life. At the opening of one of his Eton vacations, when to look at he was a mere chit of a child with a pair of gray eyes that were staggering from the sheer artlessness of them, he had dodged the parental eye at Waterloo, and instead of going down into Plowshire, he had taken ship at Rotherhithe, and had reached Amsterdam by the skin of his teeth, the tub being untrustworthy and nearly foundering in mid-channel. When he came back, more artless than ever to look at, he knew as much of the life of the Hollanders of all classes and of every side of the life, moreover, as if he had dwelt among them for a round five years. On his return to school he proceeded to record his experiences in the school organ, and on their appearance in that chaste journal, he was had up before his house master. “Where did you hear all this, Strange?” demanded the scandalized gentleman. “I saw it, sir, and it’s quite true,” was the artless reply. “The deuce it is!” muttered Dr. Bromby. “That hardly betters matters. I have ordered every copy of this paper to be burnt, Strange,” said the doctor severely, “and in future, I wish to look through your manuscript myself before it goes to the press. Unalloyed truth is sometimes out of place. Stick to your classics, Strange, you will write well some day, that is, if you become a little surer in your Latin, otherwise your English will always be slovenly. If I were you I should reserve some of my experiences, if you are in the habit of entertaining your fags with them in off-times,” concluded the doctor. “Yes, sir,” said Humphrey, and departed cheerily. Strange had just now come back unexpectedly from a long tour in Algeria. According to his own way of thinking he had had a glorious time if ever man had. He had lived in the tents of the Arabs, in the camps of the coast Zouaves, and in the hills and the deserts with the Bedouins, like David. He had known “Of the plunge in a pool’s living water, the hunt of the bear, And the sultriness showing the lion is couched in his lair. And the meal, the rich dates yellowed over with gold-dust divine, And the locust flesh steeped in the pitcher, the full draught of wine.” He had braved heat, cold, hunger, thirst, filth and squalor, fleas and worse than fleas, snakes and beasts of prey, but he had learned a new variety of man and of the conditions that mould men’s lives. He had lived the life himself and could think as such men think, feel as they feel, speak and act as they do. He had gained a new power and felt a new growth of manhood quickening in his veins, and now he was recording what he knew.