THE POCKET HUNTER 



down beside the trail overlooking the vast 

 dim valley, to hear about the green canvas, j 

 He had gotten it, he said, in London years S 

 before, and that was the first I had known / 

 of his having been abroad. It was after ) 

 one of his " big strikes " that he had made 

 the Grand Tour, and had brought nothing 

 away from it but the green canvas bags, 

 which he conceived would fit his needs, 

 and an ambition. This last was nothing 

 less than to strike it rich and set himself 

 up among the eminently bourgeois of Lon- 

 don. It seemed that the situation of the 

 wealthy English middle class, with just 

 enough gentility above to aspire to, and 

 sufficient smaller fry to bully and patronize, 

 appealed to his imagination, though of , 

 course he did not put it so crudely as that. ■ 



It was no news to me then, two or three 

 years after, to learn that he had taken ten 

 79 



