“I have travelled some thousands of miles in order to be alone; if you have any kindness, any pity, leave me.”

“Pardon me,” I said, “for intruding.”

That night the Ex-Club invited him to take part in their deliberations.  He refused, and his manner showed that he considered the invitation an insult.  I had known this man as a brilliant orator, a religious leader, the champion of a sect.  In a city across the sea I had sat as a barelegged boy on an upturned barrel, part of an immense crowd, listening to the flow of his oratory.  Next day he left the bunk-house.  Some weeks afterward I found him on a curbstone, preaching to whoever of the pedestrians would listen.

At the close of his address, I introduced myself again.  He took me to his new lodging, and I put the questions that filled my mind.  For answer he gave me the House of Commons Blue Book, which explained the charge hanging over him.  Almost daily, for weeks, I heard him on his knees proclaim his innocence of the unmentionable crime with which he was charged.  After some weeks of daily association, he said to me: 

“I believe you are sent of God to guide me, and I am prepared to take your advice.”

My advice was ready.  He turned pale as I told him to pack his trunk and take the next ship for England.

“Face the storm like a man!” I urged, and he said: 

“It will kill me, but I will do it.”

He did it, and it swept him to prison, to shame, and to oblivion.

Nothing in the life of the bunk-house was more noticeable than the way men of intelligence grouped themselves together.  Besides the Judge, there were an ex-lawyer, an ex-soldier of Victoria and a German Graf.  I named them the “Ex-Club.”  Every morning they separated as though forever.  Every night they returned and looked at one another in surprise.

At election-time both political parties had access to the register, and every lodger was the recipient of two letters.  Between elections a letter was always a matter of sensational interest; it lay on the clerk’s table, waiting to be claimed, and every lodger inspected it as he passed.  Scores of men who never expected a letter would pick it up, handle it in a wistful and affectionate manner, and regretfully lay it down again.  I have often wished I could analyze the thoughts of these men as they tenderly handled these rare visitors conducted by Uncle Sam into the bunk-house.

It was a big letter with red seals and an aristocratic monogram that first drew attention to a new-comer who had signed himself “Hans Schwanen.”  “One-eyed Dutchy” had whispered to some of his friends that the recipient of the letter was a real German Graf.

He was about sixty years of age, short, rotund, corpulent.  His head was bullet-shaped and set well down on his shoulders.  His clothes were baggy and threadbare, his linen soiled and shabby.  He had blue eyes, harsh red hair, and a florid complexion.  When he arrived, he brought three valises.  Everybody wondered what he could have in them.