Nemesis? Or should he
hurl himself from the wall, once he gained the top? At the upper end
of the incline he heard the low sound of voices. A priest and a young
girl who sat there on the parapet rose as he approached. He stopped
abruptly in front of them. "Wenceslas!" he exclaimed. "And Maria!"

"Ah, _amigo_, a quiet stroll before retiring? It is a sultry night."

"Yes," slowly replied Jose, looking at the girl, who drew back into
the shadow cast by the body of her companion. Then, bowing, he passed
on down the wall and disappeared in the darkness that shrouded the
distance.

A few minutes later the long form of the explorer appeared above the
incline. Wenceslas and the girl had departed. Seeing no one, the
American turned and descended to the ground, shaking his head in deep
perplexity.

CHAPTER 15

The next day was one of the Church's innumerable feast-days, and Jose
was free to utilize it as he might. He determined on a visit to the
suburb of Turbaco, some eight miles from Cartagena, and once the site
of Don Ignacio's magnificent country home. Although he had been some
months in Cartagena, he had never before felt any desire to pass
beyond its walls. Now it seemed to him that he must break the
limitation which those encircling walls typified, that his restless
thought might expand ere it formulated into definite concepts and
plans for future work. This morning he wanted to be alone. The old
injury done to his sensitive spirit by the publication of his journal
had been unwittingly opened anew. The old slowness had crept again
into his gait since the evening before. Over night his countenance had
resumed its wonted heaviness; and his slender shoulders bent again
beneath their former burden.

When Jose arrived in Cartagena he had found it a city of vivid
contrasts. There mediaevalism still strove with the spirit of modern
progress; and so it suited well as an environment for the dilation of
his shrunken soul-arteries. The lethal influence of the monastery long
lay over him, beneath which he continued to manifest those eccentric
habits which his prolonged state of loneliness had engendered. He
looked askance at the amenities which his associates tentatively held
out to him. He sank himself deep in study, and for weeks, even months,
he shunned the world of people and things. He found no stimulus to a
search for his ancestral palace within the city, nor for a study of
the Rincon records which lay moldering