el, the two girls, and the black remained motionless where they
were.

Suddenly Benito raised a shout, and they saw him rush toward a tree;
they all ran as well.

Sight the most unforeseen, and little adapted to gratify the eyes!

A man, hanging by the neck, struggled at the end of the liana, which,
supple as a cord, had formed into a slipknot, and the shakings came from
the jerks into which he still agitated it in the last convulsions of his
agony!

Benito threw himself on the unfortunate fellow, and with a cut of his
hunting-knife severed the cipo.

The man slipped on to the ground. Manoel leaned over him, to try and
recall him to life, if it was not too late.

"Poor man!" murmured Minha.

"Mr. Manoel! Mr. Manoel!" cried Lina. "He breathes again! His heart
beats; you must save him."

"True," said Manoel, "but I think it was about time that we came up."

He was about thirty years old, a white, clothed badly enough, much
emaciated, and he seemed to have suffered a good deal.

At his feet were an empty flask, thrown on the ground, and a cup and
ball in palm wood, of which the ball, made of the head of a tortoise,
was tied on with a fiber.

"To hang himself! to hang himself!" repeated Lina, "and young still!
What could have driven him to do such a thing?"

But the attempts of Manoel had not been long in bringing the luckless
wight to life again, and he opened his eyes and gave an "ahem!" so
vigorous and unexpected that Lina, frightened, replied to his cry with
another.

"Who are you, my friend?" Benito asked him.

"An ex-hanger-on, as far as I see."

"But your name?"

"Wait a minute and I will recall myself," said he, passing his hand over
his forehead. "I am known as Fragoso, at your service; and I am
still able to curl and cut your hair, to shave you, and to make you
comfortable according to all the rules of my art. I am a barber, so to
speak more truly, the most desperate of Figaros."

"And what made you think of----"

"What would you have, my gallant sir?" replied Fragoso, with a smile;
"a moment of despair, which I would have duly regretted had the regrets
been in another world! But eight hundred leagues of country to traverse,
and not a coin in my pouch, was not very comforting! I had lost courage
obviously."

To conclude, Fragoso had a good and pleasing figure, and as he recovered
it was evident that he was of a lively disposition. He was one of those
wandering barbers who travel on the ba