DOWN AN UNKNOWN RIVER 305 



Pedrinho, who was alone and unarmed in the camp we had 

 left. Accordingly I pushed on, followed by my compan- 

 ions, looking sharply right and left; but when we came to 

 the camp the doctor quietly walked by me, remarking, 

 "My eyes are better than yours, colonel; if he is in sight 

 I'll point him out to you, as you have the rifle." However, 

 he was not there, and the others soon joined us with the 

 welcome news that they had found the carbine. 



The murderer had stood to one side of the path and 

 killed his victim, when a dozen paces off, with deliberate 

 and malignant purpose. Then evidently his murderous ha- 

 tred had at once given way to his innate cowardice; and, 

 perhaps hearing some one coming along the path, he fled 

 in panic terror into the wilderness. A tree had knocked 

 the carbine from his hand. His footsteps showed that after 

 going some rods he had started to return, doubtless for the 

 carbine, but had fled again, probably because the body 

 had then been discovered. It was questionable whether or 

 not he would live to reach the Indian villages, which were 

 probably his goal. He was not a man to feel remorse — 

 never a common feeling; but surely that murderer was in 

 a living hell, as, with fever and famine leering at him from 

 the shadows, he made his way through the empty deso- 

 lation of the wilderness. Franca, the cook, quoted out of the 

 melancholy proverbial philosophy of the people the proverb: 

 "No man knows the heart of any one"; and then expressed 

 with deep conviction a weird ghostly belief I had never en- 

 countered before: "Paishon is following Julio now, and will 

 follow him until he dies; Paishon fell forward on his hands 

 and knees, and when a murdered man falls like that his 

 ghost will follow the slayer as long as the slayer lives." 



