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26
THE SURAKARTA

scale so earnestly that he did not notice the entrance of his friend.

There was mystery about Max. Clerks, stenographers and business men often stopped their work to look down in perplexed curiosity from their high windows at him and his dwelling. They wondered who he was and what he did; but the bushy-haired little man, with a scarred, perpetually tanned face, ignored these looks. In his life nothing was definite since his birth in Schleswig-Holstein except his presence at Gravelotte, where he was lamed in his right knee. Exactly as in India and China Max had dwelt in the farthest inland and most inaccessible villages, as in Africa and Borneo he had disappeared in the most impenetrable jungles, so here in civilization he had elected to dwell where civilization was fully represented and men