This etext was transcribed by Les Bowler
p. iiTHE MACMILLAN COMPANY
NEW YORK • BOSTON • CHICAGO• DALLAS
ATLANTA • SAN FRANCISCO
MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED
LONDON • BOMBAY •CALCUTTA
MELBOURNE
THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd.
TORONTO
“She drew up a few rods from the center ofactivity”
p. vHISGREAT ADVENTURE
BY
ROBERT HERRICK
AUTHOR OF“TOGETHER,” “ONE WOMAN’SLIFE”
“THE COMMON LOT,”ETC.
WITH FRONTISPIECE
New York
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY
1913
All rights reserved
p. viCopyright,1912,
By THE FRANK A. MUNSEY COMPANY.
Copyright, 1913,
By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY.
Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1913.
FERRISPRINTING COMPANY
NEW YORK. N. Y., U.S.A.
p. 1PART I:FORTUNE
p. 3I
It was dusk of an April day, and Fifth Avenue wascrowded. A young man, who had emerged from a large hotel,stood in the stream of traffic and gazed irresolutely up and downthe thoroughfare. He wore a long, cheap rain-coat, and hishead was covered by a steamer-cap of an old design, with twoflaps tied in a knot across the top, behind which an overabundantcrop of dull black hair pushed forth.
His thin, sallow face was unshaven, and his eyes were rimmedby round steel spectacles that gave him an almost owlishexpression. An air of dejection hung about him, as heloitered by the curb—not the imaginative depression ofyouth, soon to float off like a cloud before the sun of life, butrather the settled gloom of repeated failure, as if theconviction of final doom had already begun to penetrate deeplyinto his manhood.
He looked first up the avenue, then down, vacant of purpose,seeing nothing in the moving pageant. Finally, as ifaroused by certain curious p. 4glances that the less hurriedpassers-by cast on him, he bestirred himself and moved on downthe avenu