an across this very curious discovery. The
monotonous beat of that melody you heard is supposed to represent the
beating of the tom-toms of the Indians during their mescal rites. We are
having a mescal evening here, whiling away the hours of exile from our
native Vespuccia."

"Mescal?" I repeated blankly at first, then feeling a nudge from
Kennedy, I added hastily: "Oh, yes, to be sure. I think I have heard of
it. It's a Mexican drink, is it not? I have never had the pleasure of
tasting it or of tasting that other drink, pulque--poolkay--did I get
the accent right?"

I felt another, sharper nudge from Kennedy, and knew that I had only
made matters worse.

"Mr. Jameson," he hastened to remark, "confounds this mescal of the
Indians with the drink of the same name that is common in Mexico."

"Oh," she laughed, to my great relief, "but this mescal is something
quite different. The Mexican drink mescal is made from the maguey-plant
and is a frightfully horrid thing that sends the peon out of his senses
and makes him violent. Mescal as I mean it is a little shrub, a god, a
cult, a religion."

"Yes," assented Kennedy; "discovered by those same Kiowa Indians, was it
not?"

"Perhaps," she admitted, raising her beautiful shoulders in polite
deprecation. "The mescal religion, we found, has spread very largely in
New Mexico and Arizona among the Indians, and with the removal of the
Kiowas to the Indian reservation it has been adopted by other tribes
even, I have heard, as far north as the Canadian border."

"Is that so?" asked Kennedy. "I understood that the United States
government had forbidden the importation of the mescal plant and its
sale to the Indians under severe penalties."

"It has, sir," interposed Alvardo, who had joined us, "but still the
mescal cult grows secretly. For my part, I think it might be more wise
for your authorities to look to the whiskey and beer that unscrupulous
persons are selling. Senor Jameson," he added, turning to me, "will
you join us in a little cup of this artificial paradise, as one of your
English writers--Havelock Ellis, I think--has appropriately called it?"

I glanced dubiously at Kennedy as Senora Mendez took one of the little
buttons out of the silver tray. Carefully paring the fuzzy tuft of hairs
off the top of it--it looked to me very much like the tip of a cactus
plant, which, indeed, it was--she rolled it into a little pellet and
placed it in her mouth, chewing it slowly l