we would. But High Jack
happened to think of the United States, and began to talk ethnology.

"'Ruins!' says Major Bing. 'The woods are full of 'em. I don't know
how far they date back, but they was here before I came.'

"High Jack asks what form of worship the citizens of that locality are
addicted to.

"'Why,' says the Major, rubbing his nose, 'I can't hardly say. I
imagine it's infidel or Aztec or Nonconformist or something like
that. There's a church here--a Methodist or some other kind--with
a parson named Skidder. He claims to have converted the people to
Christianity. He and me don't assimilate except on state occasions.
I imagine they worship some kind of gods or idols yet. But Skidder
says he has 'em in the fold.'

"A few days later High Jack and me, prowling around, strikes a plain
path into the forest, and follows it a good four miles. Then a branch
turns to the left. We go a mile, maybe, down that, and run up against
the finest ruin you ever saw--solid stone with trees and vines and
under-brush all growing up against it and in it and through it. All
over it was chiselled carvings of funny beasts and people that would
have been arrested if they'd ever come out in vaudeville that way. We
approached it from the rear.

"High Jack had been drinking too much rum ever since we landed in
Boca. You know how an Indian is--the palefaces fixed his clock when
they introduced him to firewater. He'd brought a quart along with
him.

"'Hunky,' says he, 'we'll explore the ancient temple. It may be that
the storm that landed us here was propitious. The Minority Report
Bureau of Ethnology,' says he, 'may yet profit by the vagaries of wind
and tide.'

"We went in the rear door of the bum edifice. We struck a kind of
alcove without bath. There was a granite davenport, and a stone
wash-stand without any soap or exit for the water, and some hardwood
pegs drove into holes in the wall, and that was all. To go out of that
furnished apartment into a Harlem hall bedroom would make you feel
like getting back home from an amateur violoncello solo at an East
Side Settlement house.

"While High was examining some hieroglyphics on the wall that the
stone-masons must have made when their tools slipped, I stepped into
the front room. That was at least thirty by fifty feet, stone floor,
six little windows like square port-holes that didn't let much light
in.

"I looked back over my shoulder, and sees High Jack's face three feet
aw