a son, huh?” Hal asked interested.

“Yes, Señor Hal. But of him I know little—the grandson. It is as I said Old Marcellus’ son who is interest—yes? Ten years ago he disappeared mysteriously. His wife died heartbroken a little later and left behind the girl Felice, a fair flower in the jungle wilderness, and the grandson who must now be twenty-five. Felice, like the good girl she is, stays with her grandfather who is now getting very old.”

“And I suppose they’re as poor as the dickens, huh?” Hal queried. “They’re starving to death I bet, and yet I suppose they’re keeping up the old tradition. Pride, and all that. They ought to know the war is forgotten. Peace and good will ought to be their motto and bring them back to the U. S.”

“Too true, Señor Hal,” the captain agreed, “but they do not stay for that, I do not think. They stay because of an uncertainty and that is the sad part of the story. I did not tell you how the Señor Marcellus, Junior, died ten years ago.”

“Ah, I thought this wouldn’t end without Hal getting the pièce de résistance out of the story,” Denis Keen chuckled.

“Well, I notice you’re listening intently yourself,” said Hal good-naturedly. “Go on, Captain.”

“To be sure,” said the captain amiably. “It takes but a moment to tell you that Señor Marcellus was looking for gold up the Rio Pallida Mors (Pale Death)—most people call it Dead River, Señors. One day he started out prepared for his long journey to his lode and he stopped a moment to tell his wife to promise him that, if some day he did not come back, they would not rest until they found his body. He had what you call a presentiment—no? But his wife she promised and the children promised, also his father. So he went and as he feared he did not return.”

“And they never found him?”

“No, Señor Hal. Neither did they find where his lode had gone. To this day they have found neither him nor the mine. And so they look always for his body. The Indians they say he has come back from death in the form of a jaguar and every moonlight night he shrieks along the banks of the river, crying for his children or his father to come and find his body in the rushing waters of Pallida Mors.”

“A tragic story, Captain,” said Denis Keen. “They must be an unhappy group up there, being reminded of their father’s sad ending every time there’s a moon.”

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