Renshaw Fanning's Quest

nfuriated lion. Or on treasure-seeking enterprise, when physical obstacles combined with failure of water and scarcity of provisions to render advance or retreat a work of almost superhuman difficulty, the post of hardship and privation was that which he unobtrusively assumed; and, indeed, there are men still living who, but for this, would long since have left their bones in the desert-- occupants of unknown graves. No, assuredly none who know him can ever mistake Renshaw Fanning for a muff.

Such is the man whom we see, solitary, depressed, and in breaking health, contemplating, on his desert farm, the approach of ruin--which ruin all efforts on his part are powerless to avert.