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                          Transcriber’s Note:

Minor errors in punctuation and formatting have been silently corrected.
Please see the transcriber’s note at the end of this text for details
regarding the handling of any textual issues encountered during its
preparation.

This version of the text cannot represent certain typographical effects.
Italics are delimited with the ‘_’ character as _italic_.

The full-page illustrations are referred to, in the list provided, by a
quote from the text, and the page reference is to the quote, rather than
the position of the illustration in the text. In some cases, these were
re-positioned to fall nearer the scene referenced.

These illustrations also had no captions. They are distinguished, here,
by the first few words of the quoted text.

                                  The
                           Travelling Thirds

                                   By

                           Gertrude Atherton

                               Author of
                   “Rulers of Kings” “The Conqueror”
                       “The Bell in the Fog” etc.

[Illustration]

                          LONDON AND NEW YORK
                      HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS
                                  1905

                 Copyright, 1905, by HARPER & BROTHERS.

                         _All rights reserved._

                        Published October, 1905.

------------------------------------------------------------------------




                         The Travelling Thirds

                                   I


The California cousin of the Lyman T. Moultons—a name too famous to be
shorn——stood apart from the perturbed group, her feet boyishly asunder,
her head thrown back. Above her hung the thick white clusters of the
acacia,[1] drooping abundantly, opaque and luminous in the soft masses
of green, heavy with perfume. All Lyons seemed to have yielded