_And lo, between the sundawn and the sun, His day’s work and his night’s work are undone; And lo, between the nightfall and the light, He is not, and none knoweth of such an one._ --_Laus Veneris._ A NOTE ON DISAPPEARING “... but whosoever of them ate the lotus’ honeyed fruit wished to bring tidings back no more and never to leave the place; there with the lotus eaters they desired to stay, to feed on lotus and forget the homeward way.” THE ODYSSEY, Book IX. The Lotophagi are gone from the Libyan strand and the Sirens from their Campanian isle, but still the sons of men go forth to strangeness and forgetfulness. What fruit or song it is that calls them out and binds them in absence, we must try to read from their history, their psyche and the chemistry of their wandering souls. Some urgent whip of that divine vice, our curiosity, drives us to the exploration and will not relent until we discover whether they have been devoured by the Polyphemus of crime, bestialized by some profane Circe or simply made drunk with the Lethe of change and remoteness. The unreturning adventurer--the man whose destiny is hid in doubt--has tormented the imagination in every century. In life the lost comrade wakes a more poignant curiosity than the returning Odysseus. What of the true Smerdis and the false? Was it the great Aeneas the Etruscans slew, and where does Merlin lie? Did Attila die of apoplexy in the arms of Hilda or shall we believe the elder Eddas, the Nibelungen and Volsunga sagas or the Teutonic legends of later times? Was it the genuine Dmitri who was murdered in the Kremlin, and what of the two other pseudo-Dmitris? What became of Dandhu Panth after he fled into Nepal in 1859; did he perish soon or is there truth in the tale of the finger burial of Nana Sahib? And was it Quantrill who died at Louisville of his wounds after Captain Terrill’s siege of the barn at Bloomfield? These enigmas are more lasting and irritating than any other minor facet of history, and the patient searching of scholars seems but to add to the popular confusion and to the charm of our doubts. Even where research seems to arrive at positive results, the general will cling to their puzzlement, for a romantic mystery is always sweeter than a sordid fact.