," he
added, knotting his brows, "that the city was evidently unknown to the
Spaniards. I can find no mention of it in Spanish literature, and I've
searched all through the libraries of Spain. My only hope now is that
I shall run across some document down here that will allude to it, or
some one who has heard likely Indian rumors."

Jose rubbed his eyes and looked hard at the man. "Well!" he
ejaculated, "you are--if I may be permitted to say it--an original
type."

"I presume I am," admitted the American genially. "I've been all sorts
of things in my day, preacher, teacher, editor. My father used to be a
circuit rider in New England forty years ago or more. Pious--good
Lord! Why, he was one of the kind who believe the good book 'from
kiver to kiver,' you know. Used to preach interminable sermons about
the mercy of the Lord in holding us all over the smoking pit and not
dropping us in! Why, man! after listening to him expound the
Scriptures at night I used to go to bed with my hair on end and my
skin all goose-flesh. No wonder I urged him to send me to the
Presbyterian Seminary!"

"And you were ordained?" queried Jose, dark memories rising in his own
thought.

"Thoroughly so! And glad I was of it, too, for I had grown up as pious
and orthodox as my good father. I considered the ordination a through
ticket to paradise."

"But--now--"

"Oh, I found myself in time," continued the man, answering Jose's
unspoken thought. "Then I stopped preaching beautiful legends, and
tried to be genuinely helpful to my congregation. I had a fine church
in Cincinnati at that time. But--well, I mixed a trifle too much
heresy into my up-to-date sermons, I guess. Anyway, the Assembly
didn't approve my orthodoxy, and I had as little respect for its
heterodoxy, and the upshot of it was that I quit--cold." He laughed
grimly as he finished the recital. "But," he went on gravely, "I now
see that it was due simply to my desire to progress beyond the
acceptance of tradition and allegory as truth, and to find some better
foundation upon which to build than the undemonstrable articles of
faith embraced in the Westminster Confession. To me, that confession
of faith had become a confession of ignorance." He turned his shrewd
eyes upon Jose. "I was in somewhat the same mental state that I think
you are in now," he added.

"And why, if I may ask, are you now exploring?" asked Jose,
disregarding the implication.

"Oh, as for that," replied the A