seemed paralysed and her feet remained planted on the same spot.

I burst out laughing; whereat she twisted her neck until her
wrinkled, brown old face appeared over her shoulder staring at

me. This made me laugh again, whereupon she straightened herself
up once more and turned round to have a good look at me.

"Come, Cla-cla," I cried; "can you not see that I am a living man
and no spirit? I thought no one had remained behind to keep me

company and give me food. Why are you not with the others?"
"Ah, why!" she returned tragically. And then deliberately

turning from me and assuming a most unladylike attitude, she
slapped herself vigorously on the small of the back, exclaiming:

"Because of my pain here!"
As she continued in that position with her back towards me for

some time, I laughed once more and begged her to explain.
Slowly she turned round and advancedcautiously towards me,

staring at me all the time. Finally, still eyeing me
suspiciously, she related that the others had all gone on a visit

to a distant village, she starting with them; that after going
some distance a pain had attacked her in her hind quarters, so

sudden and acute that it had instantly brought her to a full
stop; and to illustrate how full the stop was she allowed herself

to go down, very unnecessarily, with a flop to the ground. But
she no sooner touched the ground than up she started to her feet

again, with an alarmed look on her owlish face, as if she had sat
down on a stinging-nettle.

"We thought you were dead," she remarked, still thinking that I
might be a ghost after all.

"No, still alive," I said. "And so because you came to the
ground with your pain, they left you behind! Well, never mind,

Cla-cla, we are two now and must try to be happy together."
By this time she had recovered from her fear and began to feel

highly pleased at my return, only lamenting that she had no meat
to give me. She was anxious to hear my adventures, and the

reason of my long absence. I had no wish to gratify her
curiosity, with the truth at all events, knowing very well that

with regard to the daughter of the Didi her feelings were as
purely savage and malignant as those of Kua-ko. But it was

necessary to say something, and, fortifying myself with the good
old Spanish notion that lies told to the heathen are not

recorded, I related that a venomousserpent had bitten me; after
which a terrible thunderstorm had surprised me in the forest, and

night coming on prevented my escape from it; then, next day,
remembering that he who is bitten by a serpent dies, and not

wishing to distress my friends with the sight of my dissolution,
I elected to remain, sitting there in the wood, amusing myself by

singing songs and smoking cigarettes; and after several days and
nights had gone by, finding that I was not going to die after

all, and beginning to feel hungry, I got up and came back.
Old Cla-cla looked very serious, shaking and nodding her head a

great deal, muttering to herself; finally she gave it as her
opinion that nothing ever would or could kill me; but whether my

story had been believed or not she only knew.
I spent an amusing evening with my old savagehostess. She had

thrown off her ailments and, pleased at having a companion in her
dreary solitude, she was good-tempered and talkative, and much

more inclined to laugh than when the others were present, when
she was on her dignity.

We sat by the fire, cooking such food as we had, and talked and
smoked; then I sang her songs in Spanish with that melody of my

own--
Muy mas clara que la luna;

and she rewarded me by emitting a barbarous chant in a shrill,
screechy voice; and finally, starting up, I danced for her

benefit polka, mazurka, and valse, whistling and singing to my
motions.

More than once during the evening she tried to introduce serious
subjects, telling me that I must always live with them, learn to

shoot the birds and catch the fishes, and have a wife; and then
she would speak of her granddaughter Oalava, whose virtues it was

proper to mention, but whose physical charms needed no
description since they had never been concealed. Each time she

got on this topic I cut her short, vowing that if I ever married
she only should be my wife. She informed me that she was old and

past her fruitful period; that not much longer would she make
cassava bread, and blow the fire to a flame with her wheezy old

bellows, and talk the men to sleep at night. But I stuck to it
that she was young and beautiful, that our descendants would be

more numerous than the birds in the forest. I went out to some
bushes close by, where I had noticed a passion plant in bloom,

and gathering a few splendid scarlet blossoms with their stems
and leaves, I brought them in and wove them into a garland for

the old dame's head; then I pulled her up, in spite of screams
and struggles, and waltzed her wildly to the other end of the

room and back again to her seat beside the fire. And as she sat
there, panting and grinning with laughter, I knelt before her

and, with suitablepassionate gestures, declaimed again the old
delicate lines sung by Mena before Columbus sailed the seas:

Muy mas clara que la luna
Sola una

en el mundo vos nacistes
tan gentil, que no vecistes

ni tavistes
competedora ninguna

Desdi ninez en la cuna
cobrastes fama, beldad, con tanta graciosidad,

que vos doto la fortuna.
Thinking of another all the time! O poor old Cla-cla, knowing

not what the jingle meant nor the secret of my wild happiness,
now when I recall you sitting there, your old grey owlish head

crowned with scarletpassion flowers, flushed with firelight,
against the background of smoke-blackened walls and rafters, how

the old undying sorrow comes back to me!
Thus our evening was spent, merrily enough; then we made up the

fire with hard wood that would last all night, and went to our
hammocks, but wakeful still. The old dame, glad and proud to be

on duty once more, religiously went to work to talk me to sleep;
but although I called out at intervals to encourage her to go on,

I did not attempt to follow the ancient tales she told, which she
had imbibed in childhood from other white-headed grandmothers

long, long turned to dust. My own brain was busy thinking,
thinking, thinking now of the woman I had once loved, far away in

Venezuela, waiting and weeping and sick with hope deferred; now
of Rima, wakeful and listening to the mysterious nightsounds of

the forest--listening, listening for my returning footsteps.
Next morning I began to waver in my resolution to remain absent

from Rima for some days; and before evening my passion, which I
had now ceased to struggle against, coupled with the thought that

I had acted unkindly in leaving her, that she would be a prey to
anxiety, overcame me, and I was ready to return. The old woman,

who had been suspiciously watching my movements, rushed out after
me as I left the house, crying out that a storm was brewing, that

it was too late to go far, and night would be full of danger. I
waved my hand in good-bye, laughingly reminding her that I was

proof against all perils. Little she cared what evil might
befall me, I thought; but she loved not to be alone; even for

her, low down as she was intellectually, the solitaryearthen pot
had no "mind stuff" in it, and could not be sent to sleep at

night with the legends of long ago.
By the time I reached the ridge, I had discovered that she had

prophesied truly, for now an ominous change had come over nature.
A dull grey vapour had overspread the entire western half of the

heavens; down, beyond the forest, the sky looked black as ink,
and behind this blackness the sun had vanished. It was too late

to go back now; I had been too long absent from Rima, and could