ed cigar, and examined it critically. Then he
requested a match.

"I shall now pass over lightly or in subdood silence the painful events
of my flight," he remarked, waving his cigar and expelling a long squirt
of smoke from his unshaven lips. "Surfice it to say that I got everythin'
that was comin' to me, an' then some, what with snakes and murskeeters,
an' briers an' mud, an' hunger an' thirst an' heat. Wasn't there a wop
named Pizarro or somethin' what got lost down in Florida? Well, he's got
nothin' on me. I never want to see the dam' state again. But I'll go back
if _you_ say so!"

His small rat eyes rested musingly upon the river; he sucked thoughtfully
at his cigar, hooked one soiled thumb into the armhole of his fancy vest
and crossed his legs.

"To resoom," he said cheerily; "I come out one day, half nood, onto the
banks of the Miami River. The rest was a pipe after what I had went
through.

"I trimmed a guy at Miami, got clothes and railroad fare, an' ducked.

"Now the valyble portion of my discourse is this here partial information
concernin' what I seen--or rather what I run onto durin' my crool flight
from my ree-lentless persecutors.

"An' these here is the facts: There is, contrary to maps, Coast Survey
guys, an' general opinion, a range of hills in Florida, made entirely of
coquina.

"It's a good big range, too, fifty miles long an' anywhere from one to
five miles acrost.

"An' what I've got to say is this: Into them there Coquina hills there
still lives the expirin' remains of the cave-men--"

"What!" I exclaimed incredulously.

"Or," he continued calmly, "to speak more stric'ly, the few individools
of that there expirin' race is now totally reduced to a few women."

"Your statement is wild--"

"No; but they're wild. I seen 'em. Bein' extremely bee-utiful I
approached nearer, but they hove rocks at me, they did, an' they run into
the rocks like squir'ls, they did, an' I was too much on the blink to
stick around whistlin' for dearie.

"But I seen 'em; they was all dolled up in the skins of wild annermals.
When I see the first one she was eatin' onto a ear of corn, an' I nearly
ketched her, but she run like hellnall--yes, sir. Just like that.

"So next I looked for some cave guy to waltz up an' paste me, but no. An'
after I had went through them dam' Coquina mountains I realized that
there was nary a guy left in this here expirin' race, only women, an'
only about a dozen o' them."

He