In a month from that time the two Trevannions might have been seen upon
a ship, steering westward from the Land's End, and six months later both
disembarked upon the beach of Callao,--_en route_ first for Lima, thence
up the mountains, to the sterile snow-crested mountains, that tower
above the treasures of Cerro Pasco,--vainly guarded within the bosom of
adamantine rocks.

CHAPTER II.

THE BROTHERS ABROAD.

This book is not intended as a history of the brothers Ralph and Richard
Trevannion. If it were so, a gap of some fifteen years--after the date
of their arrival at Cerro Pasco--would have to be filled up. I decline
to speak of this interval of their lives, simply because the details
might not have any remarkable interest for those before whom they would
be laid.

Suffice it to say, that Richard, the younger, soon became wearied of a
miner's life; and, parting with his brother, he crossed the Cordilleras,
and descended into the great Amazonian forest,--the "montana," as it is
called by the Spanish inhabitants of the Andes. Thence, in company with
a party of Portuguese traders, he kept on down the river Amazon, trading
along its banks, and upon some of its tributary streams; and finally
established himself as a merchant at its mouth, in the thriving "city"
of Gran Para.

Richard was not unsocial in his habits; and soon became the husband of a
fair-haired wife,--the daughter of a countryman who, like himself, had
established commercial relations at Para. In a few years after, several
sweet children called him "father,"--only two of whom survived to
prattle in his ears this endearing appellation, alas! no longer to be
pronounced in the presence of their mother.

Fifteen years after leaving the Land's End, Richard Trevannion, still
under thirty-five years of age, was a widower, with two
children,--respected wherever known, prosperous in pecuniary
affairs,--rich enough to return home, and spend the remainder of his
days in that state so much desired by the Sybarite Roman poet,--"otium
cum dignitate."

Did he remember the vow mutually made between him and his brother, that,
having enough money, they would one day go back to Cornwall, and recover
the ancestral estate? He did remember it. He longed to accomplish this
design. He only awaited his brother's answer to a communication he had
made to him on this very subject.

He had no doubt that Ralph's desire would be in unison with his
own,--that his brother