ent the rest of the day over it,
tuning it, touching the strings so softly with my finger-tips that to a
person four yards off the sound must have seemed like the murmur or
buzz of an insect's wings; and to this scarcely audible accompaniment I
murmured in an equally low tone a new song.

In the evening, when all were gathered under the roof and I had eaten
again, I took up the instrument once more, furtively watched by all
those half-closed animal eyes, and swept the strings loudly, and sang
aloud. I sang an old simple Spanish melody, to which I had put words
in their own language--a language with no words not in everyday use,
in which it is so difficult to express feelings out of and above the
common. What I had been constructing and practicing all the afternoon
sotto voce was a kind of ballad, an extremely simple tale of a poor
Indian living alone with his young family in a season of dearth; how
day after day he ranged the voiceless woods, to return each evening with
nothing but a few withered sour berries in his hand, to find his lean,
large-eyed wife still nursing the fire that cooked nothing, and his
children crying for food, showing their bones more plainly through
their skins every day; and how, without anything miraculous, anything
wonderful, happening, that barrenness passed from earth, and the garden
once more yielded them pumpkin and maize, and manioc, the wild fruits
ripened, and the birds returned, filling the forest with their cries;
and so their long hunger was satisfied, and the children grew sleek,
and played and laughed in the sunshine; and the wife, no longer brooding
over the empty pot, wove a hammock of silk grass, decorated with
blue-and-scarlet feathers of the macaw; and in that new hammock the
Indian rested long from his labours, smoking endless cigars.

When I at last concluded with a loud note of joy, a long, involuntary
suspiration in the darkening room told me that I had been listened to
with profound interest; and, although no word was spoken, though I was
still a stranger and under a cloud, it was plain that the experiment had
succeeded, and that for the present the danger was averted.

I went to my hammock and slept, but without undressing. Next morning
I missed my revolver and found that the holster containing it had been
detached from the belt. My knife had not been taken, possibly because it
was under me in the hammock while I slept. In answer to my inquiries I
was informed that Runi