abandoned on the path. He always could buy another camera; he could not
again carry a white orchid, plucked in the heart of the tropics on the
night peace was declared, to the girl he left behind him. Followed by El
Capitan, nosing and snuffing gratefully at the cool waters, he waded the
ford, and with his camera case swinging from his shoulder, galloped up
the opposite bank and back into the trail.

A minute later, the bridge, unable to recover from the death blow struck
by El Capitan, went whirling into the ravine and was broken upon the
rocks below. Hearing the crash behind him, Chesterton guessed that in
the jungle a tree had fallen.

They had started at six in the afternoon and had covered twenty of the
forty miles that lay between Adhuntas and Mayaguez, when, just at the
outskirts of the tiny village of Caguan, El Capitan stumbled, and when
he arose painfully, he again fell forward.

Caguan was a little church, a little vine-covered inn, a dozen one-story
adobe houses shining in the moonlight like whitewashed sepulchres. They
faced a grass-grown plaza, in the centre of which stood a great wooden
cross. At one corner of the village was a corral, and in it many ponies.
At the sight Chesterton gave a cry of relief. A light showed through the
closed shutters of the inn, and when he beat with his whip upon the
door, from the adobe houses other lights shone, and white-clad figures
appeared in the moonlight. The landlord of the inn was a Spaniard, fat
and prosperous-looking, but for the moment his face was eloquent with
such distress and misery that the heart of the young man, who was at
peace with all the world, went instantly out to him. The Spaniard was
less sympathetic. When he saw the khaki suit and the campaign hat he
scowled, and ungraciously would have closed the door. Chesterton,