But I buy no village in the Himalayas so long
as one red head flares between the tail of the heaven-climbing glacier and the
dark birch forest.
I know that breed.
THE RECRUDESCENCE OF IMRAY
Imray had achieved the impossible. Without warning, for no conceivable motive,
in his youth and at the threshold of his career he had chosen to disappear from
the world--which is to say, the little Indian station where he lived. Upon a
day he was alive, well, happy, and in great evidence at his club, among the
billiard-tables. Upon a morning he was not, and no manner of search could make
sure where he might be. He had stepped out of his place; he had not appeared at
his office at the proper time, and his dog-cart was not upon the public roads.
For these reasons and because he was hampering in a microscopical degree the
administration of the Indian Empire, the Indian Empire paused for one
microscopical moment to make inquiry into the fate of Imray. Ponds were
dragged, wells were plumbed, telegrams were dispatched down the lines of
railways and to the nearest seaport town--1,200 miles away--but Imray was not
at the end of the drag-ropes nor the telegrams. He was gone, and his place knew
him no more. Then the work of the great Indian Empire swept forward, because it
could not be delayed, and Imray, from being a man, became a mystery--such a
thing as men talk over at their tables in the club for a month and then forget
utterly.
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