village a number of
recumbent children, and then nearer at hand three men carrying
pails on yokes along a little path that ran from the encircling
wall towards the houses. These latter were clad in garments of
llama cloth and boots and belts of leather, and they wore caps of
cloth with back and ear flaps. They followed one another in single
file, walking slowly and yawning as they walked, like men who have
been up all night. There was something so reassuringly prosperous
and respectable in their bearing that after a moment's hesitation
Nunez stood forward as conspicuously as possible upon his rock, and
gave vent to a mighty shout that echoed round the valley.

The three men stopped, and moved their heads as though they
were looking about them. They turned their faces this way and
that, and Nunez gesticulated with freedom. But they did not appear
to see him for all his gestures, and after a time, directing
themselves towards the mountains far away to the right, they
shouted as if in answer. Nunez bawled again, and then once more,
and as he gestured ineffectually the word "blind" came up to the
top of his thoughts. "The fools must be blind," he said.

When at last, after much shouting and wrath, Nunez crossed the
stream by a little bridge, came through a gate in the wall, and
approached them, he was sure that they were blind. He was sure
that this was the Country of the Blind of which the legends told.
Conviction had sprung upon him, and a sense of great and rather
enviable adventure. The three stood side by side, not looking at
him, but with their ears directed towards him, judging him by his
unfamiliar steps. They stood close together like men a little
afraid, and he could see their eyelids closed and sunken, as though
the very balls beneath had shrunk away. There was an expression
near awe on their faces.

"A man," one said, in hardly recognisable Spanish. "A man it
is--a man or a spirit--coming down from the rocks."

But Nunez advanced with the confident steps of a youth who
enters upon life. All the old stories of the lost valley and the
Country of the Blind had come back to his mind, and through his
thoughts ran this old proverb, as if it were a refrain:--

"In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King."

"In the Country of the Blind the One-Eyed Man is King."

And very civilly he gave them greeting. He talked to them and
used his eyes.

"Where does he come from, brother Pedro?" ask