led the festive intentions of young Aragon.
Lorenzo was put to bed, from which retreat, at midnight, his fearful
groans summoned the colonel to his side. The latter found him tossing
and murmuring, but incapable of uttering a word. His faithful Eusebio,
at the head of the bed, answered for him. The honest fellow feared lest
his master might have caught again a touch of the old fever which had
formerly attacked him in searching for cascarillas in the environs of
Tipoani in Bolivia. These symptoms, recurring in the lower valleys of
the Cconi, would make it impossible for the brave explorer safely to
continue with the party. As the mestizo propounded this inconvenient
theory, a new burst of groans from the examinador seemed to confirm it.
The grave news brought all the party to the sick bed. Colonel Perez,
whom the touching comparison of wives made in the hammocks of Morayaca
had sensibly attached to Lorenzo, endeavored to feel his pulse; but the
patient, drawing in his hand by a peevish movement, only rolled himself
more tightly in his blanket, and increased his groans to roars.
Presently, exhausted by so much agony, he fell into a slumber.

In the morning the examinador, in a dolorous voice, announced that he
should be obliged to return to Cuzco. This resolution might have seemed
the obstinate delirium of the fever but for the mournful and pathetic
calmness of the victim. Eusebio, he said, should return with him as far
as Chile-Chile, where a conveyance could be had; and he himself would
give such explicit instructions to the cascarilleros that nothing would
be lost by his absence to the purposes of the expedition. Yielding to
pity and friendship, the colonel gave in his adhesion to the plan, and
even proposed his own hammock as a sort of palanquin, and the loan of a
pair of the peons for bearers. They could return with Eusebio to
Sausipata, where the party would be obliged to wait for the three. After
sketching out his plan, Colonel Perez looked for approval to Mr. Marcoy,
and received an affirmative nod. The proposition seemed so agreeable to
the sick man that already an alleviation of his misery appeared to be
superinduced. He even smiled intelligently as he rolled into the
hammock. In a very short time he made a sort of theatrical exit, borne
in the hammock like an invalid princess, and fanned with a palm branch
out of the garden by the faithful Eusebio.

"Poor devil!" said Perez as the mournful procession departed: