om he was riding to overtake.

'He had better not ride about too much alone,' said the Spaniard.
'There are some long knives about, and the senor is a short man.'

'What is the trouble on the estate?' said Peter. But he could get no
information from Lara. 'He had better take care,' the man said.
'Senor Purvis would be safer if he were to sail away in his steamer,
and be gone for a month or two.'

'He has a mixed lot of men on his estancia, has he not?' Peter asked.

'Yes,' said the man; 'but they are mostly Spanish, and the senor, for
all his Spanish tongue, has not got a heart that understands the
people.'

'You don't think anything can have happened to him?' Peter asked.

He reflected that the road was an open one all the way, and that he
must have seen if there had been anything like a disturbance; but in
the end a certain apprehension for the safety of the man made him think
that he had better push on and hear if there were any news of him at La
Dorada. There might be some path or track to the river-side of which
he knew nothing; and if that bypath existed Purvis would certainly take
it, however circuitous it might be. There seemed to be some curious
obliquity about him which made for crooked ways, and in any case Peter
did not want to miss the mail with Toffy's letters. He said good
night, and, hearing no news of the traveller at the quay, he rode on
until he reached the small unfenced railway station at Taco, set down
apparently promiscuously on the grey arid plain. There Lara's boy was
waiting with his mail-bag, and after a time the sleepy station-master
began to bestir himself, and a cart came in with five horses harnessed
abreast carrying some freight. Still there was no sign of Purvis, and
Peter had to give his letters to the guard when at last, with a shrill
whistle, the train came into the station.

It was very odd, he reflected; and he began to wonder whether Purvis
was in danger, and to be vaguely disturbed by what the people in the
hut had said to him. Ross had told him many tales of how Englishmen
had been murdered out here. There was the case of poor Wentworth,
whose Spanish wife had held him down when he had tried to escape, and
whose own major-domo had shot him at the door. Nobody knew anything of
the matter, of course. The Spaniards keep their secrets well. Nobody
was ever brought to justice; and the affair, which would have made a
sensation at home, only horrified a few English ne