why the old Indian, Galves, is secretly paid to keep green the grave
of President Miraflores by one who never saw that unfortunate
statesman in life or in death, and why that one was wont to walk
in the twilight, casting from a distance looks of gentle sadness upon
that unhonored mound.

Elsewhere than at Coralio one learns of the impetuous career
of Isabel Guilbert. New Orleans gave her birth and the mingled
French and Spanish creole nature that tinctured her life with such
turbulence and warmth. She had little education, but a knowledge of
men and motives that seemed to have come by instinct. Far beyond the
common woman was she endowed with intrepid rashness, with a love for
the pursuit of adventure to the brink of danger, and with desire for
the pleasures of life. Her spirit was one to chafe under any curb;
she was Eve after the fall, but before the bitterness of it was felt.
She wore life as a rose in her bosom.

Of the legion of men who had been at her feet it was said that
but one was so fortunate as to engage her fancy. To President
Miraflores, the brilliant but unstable ruler of Anchuria, she yielded
the key to her resolute heart. How, then, do we find her (as the
Coralians would have told you) the wife of Frank Goodwin, and happily
living a life of dull and dreamy inaction?

The underlying threads reach far, stretching across the sea.
Following them out it will be made plain why "Shorty" O'Day, of the
Columbia Detective Agency, resigned his position. And, for a lighter
pastime, it shall be a duty and a pleasing sport to wander with Momus
beneath the tropic stars where Melpomene once stalked austere. Now
to cause laughter to echo from those lavish jungles and frowing crags