; and the women cook the meat and all eat from one
pot. And with the Indians I will be an Indian, and hunt in the forest
and eat with them and drink with them.' Then I left my country and came
here, and lived with you, Runi, and was well treated. And now, why did
I go away? This I have now to tell you. After I had been here a certain
time I went over there to the forest. You wished me not to go, because
of an evil thing, a daughter of the Didi, that lived there; but I feared
nothing and went. There I met an old man, who talked to me in the white
man's language. He had travelled and seen much, and told me one strange
thing. On a mountain at Riolama he told me that he had seen a great lump
of gold, as much as a man could carry. And when I heard this I said:
'With the gold I could return to my country, and buy weapons for myself
and all my people and go to war with my enemy and deprive him of all his
possessions and serve him as he served me.' I asked the old man to take
me to Riolama; and when he had consented I went away from here without
saying a word, so as not to be prevented. It is far to Riolama, and I
had no weapons; but I feared nothing. I said: 'If I must fight I must
fight, and if I must be killed I must be killed.' But when I got to
Riolama I found no gold. There was only a yellow stone which the old
man had mistaken for gold. It was yellow, like gold, but it would buy
nothing. Therefore I came back to Parahuari again, to my friend; and if
he is angry with me still because I went away without informing him, let
him say: 'Go and seek elsewhere for a new friend, for I am your friend
no longer.'"

I concluded thus boldly because I did not wish him to know that I had
suspected him of harbouring any sinister designs, or that I looked
on our quarrel as a very serious one. When I had finished speaking he
emitted a sound which expressed neither approval nor disapproval, but
only the fact that he had heard me. But I was satisfied. His expression
had undergone a favourable change; it was less grim. After a while
he remarked, with a peculiar twitching of the mouth which might have
developed into a smile: "The white man will do much to get gold. You
walked twenty days to see a yellow stone that would buy nothing." It was
fortunate that he took this view of the case, which was flattering to
his Indian nature, and perhaps touched his sense of the ludicrous. At
all events, he said nothing to discredit my story, to which they h