there were a hundred of them."

"You pay me a very high compliment," said Max; "but I am afraid that,
unless you can find somebody else to take my place, you will have to do
as you fear, that is to say, go on alone."

"Well, I will put my trust in faith," said the other. "Stranger things
than that have turned up trumps before now. I've got a very solid belief
in my luck, and somehow I've got a fancy that it won't desert me."

"We shall see," replied Max, "and now, if you have no more to say to me,
I think I must be going on."

"You're quite sure I can't tempt you?" said Moreas.

"Quite," Max answered. "If I had nothing else to do, I'd go with you
to-morrow; but, situated as I am, wild horses would not shift me."

"Well, bear the fact in mind that I shall be back in a month," said
Moreas. "And also that the address I have already given you will find
me. Farewell, Senor."

"Farewell, and _bon voyage_ to you," replied Max.

Then, with a wave of their hands, they parted, and Max continued his way
towards the office for which he had been making when he had met Moreas.

He had been spending the greater portion of the day superintending the
removal of some cargo on board a ship in the harbour, and, towards
evening, made his way ashore again to meet Brockford. Leaving the
landing-stage, he proceeded up the street till he reached the Rua
Direita. As he crossed the road he came within an ace of being knocked
down by a cab, which was coming at a swift pace towards him. He looked
up, as if to expostulate with the driver, and then, as suddenly, turned
and fled. Had anyone been near enough to see, he would have told you
that his face was deathly pale, and that, when he reached the pavement,
he trembled like a man with the palsy. _For the person in the cab was
myself, his brother Paul!_

And yet, by some unhappy chance, I did not see him.

"Good heavens!" he muttered, when he had partially recovered. "Paul is
searching for me. What am I to do now?"

CHAPTER XI.

In order to make my narrative more clear to you, it is necessary that I
should hark back for a short distance and give you an account of my own
doings, from the time Max left us up to that never-to-be-forgotten day,
when I received the information that he was in Brazil.

Then some eighteen months had gone by, during which period we neither
saw nor heard anything of, or from, him. He might have been dead for all
we knew to the contrary. In the meantime m