The Kennewick courier-reporter. [volume] (Kennewick, Wash.) 1914-1938, 1914-04-02

BIC udu udu HOluluS Whatever 10 uO
with the selection of husband it is
not at all unlikely that she was not
wildly and passionately in love with the
one that fate and her titled Russian ia
Their had selected for her. However,
simply because she was surprised into
a tiny exclamation of approval at sight
of a splendid young stranger it must
not be inferred therefrom that her
thoughts We're in any way disloyal to
her spouse. She merely admired, as
she might have admired particularly
fine specimen of any species. Further
more, the young man was unquestion-
ably good to look at.
AS her furtive glance rested upon
his profile, he rose to leave the deck.
The Countess de Coude beckoned to a
passing steward.
"Who is that gentleman she asked.
Gle is booked, madame, as NJ. Tar
Fan Of Africa replied the steward.
Rather a large estate" thought the
girl, but now her interest was still fur
Their aroused.
AS Tarzan walked slowly toward the
smoking room he came unexpectedly
upon two men whispering excitedly
just without. He would have vOuch-
safed them not even passing thought
but for the strangely guilty glance that
one Of them shot in his direction.
Tarzan- entered the smoking room
and sought chair little apart from
the others who were there. He felt in
no mood for conversation, and as he
rather sorrowfully over the past few
weeks of his life. Time and again he
had wondered if he had acted wisely
in renouncing his birthright to man
to whom he owed nothing. 1t is true
that he liked Clayton. but-ah, but
that was not the question. 1t was not
for William Cecil Clayton, Lord Grey
stoke, that he had denied his birth. It
was for the woman whom 10Th he and
Clayton loved and whom strange
freak of fate had given to Clayton in
stead of to him. III.
That she loved him made the thing
doubly difficult to bear, yet he knew
that he could have done nothing less
than he did do that night within the
little railway station in the far Wis
cOnsin woods. To him her happiness
was the first consideration of all. and
his brief experience with civilization
and civilized men had taught him that
without money and position life to
most of them was uncomfortable.
Jane Porter had been born to both,
and had Tarzan taken them away
from her future husband it would
doubtless have plunged her into life
of misery and torture. That she would
have spurned Clayton once he had
been stripped of both his title and his
estates never for once occurred to Tar
zan. for he credited to others the same
honest loyalty that was so inherent a
quality in himself. Nor in this in
stance had he erred.
Tarzan's thoughts drifted from the
past to the future. He tried to look
forward with pleasurable sensations to
his return to the jungle of his birth
and boyhood. the cruel. fierce jungle
in which he had spent twenty Of his
twenty-five years. But who or what
of all the myriad jungle life would
there be to welcome his return? Not
one. Only Tantor, the elephant, could
he call friend. The others would hunt
him or flee from him as had been their
way in the past.
Not even the apes Of his own tribe
would extend the hand of fellowship
to him.
If civilization had done nothing else
for Tarzan,O the Apes it had to some
extent taught him to crave the society
of his own kind and to feel with genu-
inc pleasure the cOngenial warmth of
companionship. And in the same ratio
had it made any other life distasteful
to him. 1t was difficult to imagine a
world without a friend-without liv-
ing thing who spoke the new tongues
which Tarzan had learned to love SO
well. And so it was that Tarzan look
ed with little relish upon the future he
had mapped out for himself.
AS he sat musing over his cigarette
his eyes fell upon mirror before him
and in it he saw reflected a table at
which four men sat at cards. Present
~ one of them rose to leave and then
another approached. and Tarzan could
see that he courteously offered to fill
the vacant chair that the game might
not be interrupted. He was the small
er of the two whom Tarzan had seen
whispering just outside the smoking
room.
Aside from the man who had but
just entered the game, Tarzan knew
the name Of but one of the other play
ers. 1t was he who sat opposite the
new player, Count Raoul de Coude.
whom an overattentive steward had
pointed out as one Of the celebrities of
the passage. describing him as man
high in the official family of the French
minister Of war. -.
Suddenly TaHan's attention was riv-
eted upon the picture in the glass. The