of a magnificent tree, he did not even admire the lofty boughs of
that _"pao ferro,"_ or iron wood, with its somber bark, hard as the
metal which it replaces in the weapon and utensil of the Indian
savage. No. Lost in thought, the captain of the woods turned the
curious paper again and again between his fingers. With the cipher,
of which he had the secret, he assigned to each letter its true
value. He read, he verified the sense of those lines, unintelligible
to all but him, and then he smiled--and a most unpleasant smile it
was.

Then he murmured some phrases in an undertone which none in the
solitude of the Peruvian forests could hear, and which no one, had he
been anywhere else, would have heard.

"Yes," said he, at length, "here are a hundred lines very neatly
written, which, for some one that I know, have an importance that is
undoubted. That somebody is rich. It is a question of life or death
for him, and looked at in every way it will cost him something." And,
scrutinizing the paper with greedy eyes, "At a conto [1] only for
each word of this last sentence it will amount to a considerable sum,
and it is this sentence which fixes the price. It sums up the entire
document. It gives their true names to true personages; but before
trying to understand it I ought to begin by counting the number of
words it contains, and even when this is done its true meaning may be
missed."

In saying this Torres began to count mentally.

"There are fifty-eight words, and that makes fifty-eight contos. With
nothing but that one could live in Brazil, in America, wherever one