fugitives were rapidly diminishing. While, however, the calling
continued sufficiently profitable, the captains of the woods formed a
peculiar class of adventurers, principally composed of freedmen and
deserters--of not very enviable reputation. The slave hunters in fact
belonged to the dregs of society, and we shall not be far wrong in
assuming that the man with the cryptogram was a fitting comrade for
his fellow _"capitaes do mato."_ Torres--for that was his
name--unlike the majority of his companions, was neither half-breed,
Indian, nor negro. He was a white of Brazilian origin, and had
received a better education than befitted his present condition. One
of those unclassed men who are found so frequently in the distant
countries of the New World, at a time when the Brazilian law still
excluded mulattoes and others of mixed blood from certain
employments, it was evident that if such exclusion had affected him,
it had done so on account of his worthless character, and not because
of his birth.

Torres at the present moment was not, however, in Brazil. He had just
passed the frontier, and was wandering in the forests of Peru, from
which issue the waters of the Upper Amazon.

He was a man of about thirty years of age, on whom the fatigues of a
precarious existence seemed, thanks to an exceptional temperament and
an iron constitution, to have had no effect. Of middle height, broad
shoulders, regular features, and decided gait, his face was tanned
with the scorching air of the tropics. He had a thick black beard,
and eyes lost under contracting eyebrows, giving that swift but hard
glance so characteristic of insolent natures. Clothed as backwoodsmen
are generally clothed, not over elaborately, his garments bore
witness to long and roughish wear. On his head, stuck jauntily on one