d primitive about the old
Buccaneer, and it was not hard to see how he had, so to speak, swept the
romantic girl off her feet by the fiery spirit that had burned him out.
Yet he had never talked about other women, and though he knew the South,
Kit thought he had cared for none.

"I left her in a few weeks," Adam went on. "Alvarez was putting up for
president and my savings were at stake. Hattie went home to Virginia
while I helped Alvarez on the coast. He was hard up against it, though
he's been president three times since. Well, when things looked blackest,
I was knocked out in Salinas swamps, by fever and a bullet that touched
my lungs. They took me to the old Indian mission--we were cut off from
the ship--and Father Herman put the _rurales_ off my track. I've sent him
wine and candles, he's at the mission yet; it stands between thick forest
and swamps like this, and the padre's the only white man who has lived
there long. Get down the chart and I'll show you the landing place."

Kit did so, feeling that he ought to indulge a sick man's caprice, and
Adam, after giving him clear directions, was quiet for some minutes. Then
he began again, with an effort:

"Vanhuyten told Hattie, and I found out afterwards, that she had had
trouble at home. Her folks had never trusted me and wanted to keep her
back, but she had rich friends who sent her out, like an American
princess, on a big steam yacht. She got to the mission when I was at my
worst, and finding I could not be moved, sent the yacht away. It was some
days before I knew she had come. There was no doctor to be got. Alvarez
could not send help, and the government soldiers were hunting for his
friends, but Father Herman knew something about medicine and Hattie
helped him better than a trained nurse. I can see her now, going about
the mud-walled room in her clean, white dress, without a hint of
weariness in her gentle eyes. That was when she thought I was watching,
but sometimes at night her head bent and her figure drooped.

"It was blisteringly hot and when the sun went down the poisonous steam
from the swamps drifted round the spot. Sometimes I begged her not to
stay, and sometimes I raged, but Hattie could not be moved and my weak
anger broke before her smiles. She was strong and would not get fever,
she said; she had come to nurse me, and, if I insisted, would go home
when I was well."

Adam stopped and asked for a drink, and afterwards Kit hoped he had gone
to sl