was lighted; my host was waiting.

Hugo set down my bag, accepted another gold coin; and with a queer
sidelong smile, the incentive for which I had not the slightest idea,
he vanished. I fronted my host, this Jacob Spawn. Strange fate that
should have led me to Spawn! And to little Jetta!

* * * * *

Spawn was a fat-bellied Dutchman, as the field attendant had said. A
fellow of perhaps fifty-five, with sparse gray hair and a heavy-jowled,
smooth-shaved face from which his small eyes peered stolidly at me. He
laid aside a huge, old-fashioned calabash pipe and offered a pudgy hand.

"Welcome, young man, to Nareda. Seldom do we see strangers."

The meal which he presently cooked and served me himself was lavishly
done. He spoke good English, but slowly, heavily, with the guttural
intonation of his race. He sat across the table from me, puffing his
pipe while I ate.

"What brings you here, young lad? A week, you say?"

"Or more. I don't know. I'm looking for oil. There should be petroleum
beneath these rocks."

For an hour I avoided his prying questions. His little eyes roved me,
and I knew he was no fool, this Dutchman, for all his heavy, stolid
look.

We remained in his kitchen. Save for its mud walls, its concave,
dome-roof, it might have been a cookery of the Highlands. There was a
table with its tube-light; the chairs; his electron stove; his orderly
rows of pots and pans and dishes on a broad shelf.

I recall that it seemed to me a woman's hand must be here. But I saw no
woman. No one, indeed, beside Spawn himself seemed to live here. He was
reticent of his own business, however much he wanted to pry into mine.

I had felt convinced that we were alone. But suddenly I realized it was
not so. The kitchen adjoined an interior back-garden. I could see it
through the opened door oval--a dim space of flowers; a little path to a
pergola; an adobe fountain. It was a sort of Spanish patio out there,
partially enclosed by the wings of the house. Moonlight was struggling
into it. And, as I gazed idly, I thought I saw a figure lurking. Someone
watching us.

* * * * *

Was it a boy, observing us from the shadowed moonlit garden? I thought
so. A slight, half grown boy. I saw his figure--in short ragged trousers
and a shirt-blouse--made visible in a patch of moonlight as he moved
away and entered the dark opposite wing of the house.

I did not see the bo