merican easily, "I used to teach
history and became especially interested in ancient civilizations,
lost cities, and the like, in the Western Hemisphere. Long before I
left the ministry oil was struck on our little Pennsylvania farm,
and--well, I didn't have to work after that. So for some years I've
devoted myself strictly to my particular hobby of travel. And in my
work I find it necessary to discard ceremony, and scrape acquaintance
with all sorts and conditions. I especially cultivate clergymen. I've
wanted to know you ever since I first saw you out here. But I couldn't
wait for a formal introduction. And so I broke in unceremoniously upon
your meditations a few moments ago."

"I am grateful to you for doing so," said Jose frankly, holding out a
hand. "There is much that you can tell me--much that I want to know.
But--" He again looked cautiously around.

"Ah, I understand," said Hitt, quickly sensing the priest's
uneasiness. "What say you, shall we meet somewhere down by the city
wall? Say, at the old Inquisition cells?"

Jose nodded his acquiescence, and they separated. A few minutes later
the two were seated in one of the cavernous archways of the long,
echoing corridor which leads to the deserted barracks and the gloomy,
bat-infested cells beneath. A vagrant breeze drifted now and then
across the grim wall above them, and the deserted road in front lay
drenched in the yellow light of the tropic moon. There was little
likelihood of detection here, where the dreamy plash of the sea
drowned the low sound of their voices; and Jose breathed more freely
than in the populous _plaza_ which they had just left.

"Good Lord!" muttered the explorer, returning from a peep into the
foul blackness of a subterranean tunnel, "imagine what took place here
some three centuries ago!"

"Yes," returned Jose sadly; "and in the reeking dungeons of San
Fernando, out there at the harbor entrance. And, what is worse, my own
ancestors were among the perpetrators of those black deeds committed
in the name of Christ."

"Whew! You don't say! Tell me about it." The explorer drew closer.
Jose knew somehow that he could trust this stranger, and so he briefly
sketched his ancestral story to his sympathetic listener. "And no one
knows," he concluded in a depressed tone, "how many of the thousands
of victims of the Inquisition in Cartagena were sent to their doom by
the house of Rincon. It may be," he sighed, "that the sins of my
fathers ha