"A month ago," went on Trotter, "she went away. I don't know where to.
But--"

"You'd better come back to the States," I insisted. "I can promise you
positively that my brother will give you a position in cotton, sugar, or
sheetings--I am not certain which."

"I think she went back with her mother," said Trotter, "to the village
in the mountains that they come from. Tell me, what would this job you
speak of pay?"

"Why," said I, hesitating over commerce, "I should say fifty or a
hundred dollars a month--maybe two hundred."

"Ain't it funny," said Trotter, digging his toes in the sand, "what a
chump a man is when it comes to paddling his own canoe? I don't know. Of
course, I'm not making a living here. I'm on the bum. But--well, I wish
you could have seen that Timotea. Every man has his own weak spot."

The gig from the _Andador_ was coming ashore to take out the captain,
purser, and myself, the lone passenger.

"I'll guarantee," said I confidently, "that my brother will pay you
seventy-five dollars a month."

"All right, then," said William Trotter. "I'll--"

But a soft voice called across the blazing sands. A girl, faintly
lemon-tinted, stood in the Calle Real and called. She was