caught in the trap would be battered to death by boulders flung from the crests of opposing precipices.

Very reluctantly the Indians allowed him to act as their ambassador. By sheer force of will he bore down opposition, and was taken to a point whence the smoke of campfires was visible above the trees. It was hard to say whether the faith his friends placed in him was stronger than their fear and loathing of the white strangers; but he exacted a promise that, if he persuaded the members of the expedition to retreat, they would not be molested. Oddly enough, neither he nor the Indians gave a thought to any other possible development. These savages believed that the white god who had dropped upon them from the skies would never leave them, and Power himself had almost forgotten the existence of the outer world. Most certainly, he paid no heed to the fact that his seven years of expiation were nearly sped. He was happy among these simple people. In his way, he was a king, and the habit of ruling had become second nature.

By chance, that day he carried the spear which had been his faithful ally in crossing the Andes, and a weird and barbarous figure he must have presented when he walked into an almost unguarded camp which had been set up for a few hours on the right bank of the river. Clothed in skins, his face bronzed to a deep brown by constant exposure to the elements, his hair falling over his shoulders, and a long beard sweeping to his breast, he looked a veritable wild man of the woods.

A halfbreed peon who was the first to see him whipped out a revolver, and shouted a warning; but Power held his spear crosswise above his head, show

ing, by this Indian sign, that he came in peace, and he was permitted to approach.

"Where is your leader?" he asked in Spanish.

The peon seemed to be vastly astonished; but he turned to a tall, thin, elderly man who had dived out of a tent at his cry, and now strode forward.

"Where have you come from?" he said; but his speech betrayed him, and Power added to the sensation he had already caused by saying:

"You are no Spaniard, at any rate."

"Good Lord!" cried the other. "It's an Englishman!"

"Next thing to it, an American," said Power.

"What is your name, and how do you happen to be in this outlandish place?" was the bewildered demand.

"I am here to explain all that, and more. Are you the head of this expedition?

"Yes."

"Well, what about discussing matters in that tent of yours?"

"Come right along," said the stranger, leading the way.

CHAPTER XV

THE NEW LIFE

NEARLY seven years had elapsed since Power had either seen a man of his own race, or heard civilized speech. During all that time, save when he spoke aloud in self-communing, or hummed the half-remembered words of a song, he had neither uttered, nor read, nor written a word of English. One literary treasure, indeed, had come his way, and he made good use of it.

Some men of the tribe, digging one day for truffles, broke into a cave, in which there was a skeleton. Among the bones, wrapped in soft leather and parchment, the Indians found a book, which they brought to their white leader. It was an illuminated Book of Hours, or "Horæ Beatæ Mariæ Virginis," written in Latin and Spanish, and, as Power ascertained subsequently, the work of an Italian of the fifteenth century. No more beautiful example of the exquisite classical Renaissance period could be produced by the Vatican library. The character in the figures and naturalness in the landscapes bespoke a ripe art, and many of the vellum pages were bordered by the solid frame which gives full scope to the artist's fancy by its facilities for the introduction of medallions, vignettes, twisted Lombardic vines, cupids, fawns, colored gems, and birds of brilliant plumage. Veritably, this was more precious than if its leaves were

Horæ "

of solid gold; its value to Power in those lonely hours was of a spring in the desert to a parched traveler.

Despite such an invaluable stimulus to his mind, however, it was almost with difficulty, and certainly with marked hesitancy, that he was able now to arrange the words of a sentence in their ordered sequence, and often he found his tongue involuntarily lending an Indian twist to idiomatic expressions. But his labored utterance was either not so marked as he imagined, or his host was so surprised at meeting a white man so far from civilization that he could not repress his own excitement. At the outset, too, the instinct of hospitality helped to relieve the tension.

66

Can I offer you anything in the way of refreshment—some whisky, or tea, or a cigar?" came the courteous inquiry.

"A cigar, by all means. I have not smoked one for so long a time that I have forgotten what it is like." "It is pretty evident you have been living among the Indians," said the other, passing him a cigar-case. "How in the world did you contrive to get lost in these parts? You did not come through Patagonia, I fancy?"

Power took thought before answering. Some halfatrophied emotion stirred within him.

"Patagonia? Is this country Patagonia?" he said at last.

"Yes. Do you mean to say you don't know that?" "I had a notion that it was the Argentine. My Indian friends invariably speak of the white inhabitants as Argentinos."

"But how did you get here?"

His questioner whistled. "By Jove!" he cried, "you had your nerve with you."

"I couldn't help myself. I was a prisoner in the hands of a Trans-Andean tribe, and they turned me adrift. I had to win through somehow, or die." "What's your name, anyhow?"

"John Darien Power."

Mine's Sinclair-George Sinclair. Well, Mr. Power, this is a fortunate meeting for both of us. You could never have reached the coast if you had not fallen in with just such an outfit as mine, because there are the devil's own breeds of Indians prowling about the last hundred and fifty miles of this river. Luckily, they dare not attack forty well-armed men; but, if looks count, they are willing for the job should an opportunity offer. We simply couldn't secure a guide; so decided to follow the river all the way, especially as it made transport fairly easy, except at the rapids. Now you, on the other hand, can tell us just what we want to know. Is the stream practicable much farther? What sort of country lies between this point and the snow-line?"

"Yes, I can tell you those things, and a good deal more. What is the object of your expedition? Gold?"

Sinclair laughed rather constrainedly. "I suppose that is the bedrock of the proposition," he said. "A bit of science, a bit of prospecting, a last glimpse at a country which is not marked on any map before I leave