me this cipher, who told me where I could find his old colleague, and
the name under which he has been hiding himself for so many years,
hardly suspects that he has made my fortune!"
For the last time Torres glanced over the yellow paper, and then,
after carefully folding it, put it away into a little copper box
which he used for a purse. This box was about as big as a cigar case,
and if what was in it was all Torres possessed he would nowhere have
been considered a wealthy man. He had a few of all the coins of the
neighboring States--ten double-condors in gold of the United States
of Colombia, worth about a hundred francs; Brazilian reis, worth
about as much; golden sols of Peru, worth, say, double; some Chilian
escudos, worth fifty francs or more, and some smaller coins; but the
lot would not amount to more than five hundred francs, and Torres
would have been somewhat embarrassed had he been asked how or where
he had got them. One thing was certain, that for some months, after
having suddenly abandoned the trade of the slave hunter, which he
carried on in the province of Para, Torres had ascended the basin of
the Amazon, crossed the Brazilian frontier, and come into Peruvian
territory. To such a man the necessaries of life were but few;
expenses he had none--nothing for his lodging, nothing for his
clothes. The forest provided his food, which in the backwoods cost
him naught. A few reis were enough for his tobacco, which he bought
at the mission stations or in the villages, and for a trifle more he
filled his flask with liquor. With little he could go far.
When he had pushed the paper into the metal box, of which the lid
shut tightly with a snap, Torres, instead of putting it into the
pocket of his under-vest, thought to be extra careful, and placed it
near him in a hollow of a root of the tree beneath which he was
sitting. This proceeding, as it turned out, might have cost him dear.
It was very warm; the air was oppressive. If the church of the
nearest village had possessed a clock, the clock would have struck
two, and, coming with the wind, Torres would have heard it, for it
was not more than a couple of miles off. But he cared not as to time.
Accustomed to regulate his proceedings by the height of the sun,
calculated with more or less accuracy, he could scarcely be supposed
to conduct himself with military precision. He breakfasted or dined
when he pleased or when he could; he slept when and where sleep
overtook him. If his table was not always spread, his bed was always
ready at the foot of some tree in the open forest. And in other
respects Torres was not difficult to please. He had traveled during
most of the morning, and having already eaten a little, he began to
feel the want of a snooze. Two or three hours' rest would, he
thought, put him in a state to continue his road, and so he laid
himself down on the grass as comfortably as he could, and waited for
sleep beneath the ironwood-tree.
Torres was not one of those people who drop off to sleep without
