I saw Lilla but once alone, and then the encounter was not of my seeking.  She came up to me, though, with a sweet, sad expression in her face and a trusting look in her eyes that made my heart bound, as she laid her hands in mine and thanked me for what she called my gallantry; and I was so taken up by her words that I hardly noticed the scowl Garcia gave as he came in.  In fact, just then my heart felt so large that in my joy I could have shaken hands with him so warmly that I should have made the bones of that fishy fin of his crack again.

But there was no handshaking:  Garcia walking to the window and lighting a cigar, while Lilla hurried from the room, as was now her custom when Garcia came.

The first flush of joy passed and I was alone with the half-breed, to feel how impossible any friendly feeling was between us; and seeing that he was disposed to do nothing but stare at me in a half-sneering, half-scowling fashion, I strolled out, paying no heed to the burning sun as I made for the woods, where the trees screened me; and then on and on I went, mile after mile, through the hot steamy twilight, amidst giants of vegetation hoary with moss.  Beast or reptile, harmless or noxious, troubled me little now, for I was in pursuit of the golden idol of my thoughts, winning it from its concealment, and then, with everything around gilded by its lustre, living in a future that was all happiness and joy.

But I was not always dreaming.  At times I searched eagerly in places that I thought likely to be the homes of buried Peruvian treasure; without avail, though, for I had no guide ­nothing but tradition and the misty phantoms of bygone readings.

To the people at the hacienda my wanderings must have seemed absurd, for though I took my gun I never brought anything back.  This day game was in abundance, but I did not heed it ­only wandered on till I came to a rugged part of the forest far up the mountain-side, and seated myself on a lump of moss-grown rock in a gloomy, shady spot, tired and discouraged by the thought that I was pursuing a phantom.

What should I do, then?  I asked myself.  Go, as my uncle advised, to Texas?  That meant separation; and yet I knew that I could not stay, and, in spite of all my golden hopes, the future looked very black to me.  I kept putting it off, but it would come.  I must look the difficulty in the face ­the end must arrive; and I laughed bitterly as I thought of my prospect ­even if such treasures as I had heard of did exist ­of finding either of them in the vast wilds spread for hundreds of miles around.

My meditations were interrupted by the sharp crackle made by a dry twig trampled upon by a foot; there was a rustling noise close behind me, and as I turned I became aware of a face peering out at me from a dense bank of creepers, as a voice whispered: 

“Is your gun loaded, Mas’r Harry?”

“You here, Tom!” I exclaimed.

“Course I am!” said Tom indignantly.  “What else did I come out here for if it wasn’t to take care of you?  And a nice game you’re carrying on ­ playing bo-peep with a fellow!  Here you are one minute, and I says to myself, `He won’t go out this morning.’  Next moment I look round, and you’re gone!  But this here sort of thing won’t do, sir!  If you’re going on like this I shall give notice to leave, or else I shall never get back alive.”

“Why not?” I said, laughing at his anxious face.

“’Cause of these here rambling ways of yours, sir.”

“And if I take care, pray what danger is there in them, Tom?”

“Care ­care!” echoed Tom.  “Why, that’s what you don’t take, sir.  I’m `Care,’ and you leave me at home.  You don’t say, `Come and look after me, Tom,’ but go on trusting to yourself, while all the time you’re like some one in a dream.”

“But what is there to be afraid of, Tom?”

“Sarpints, sir!”

“Pooh, Tom!  We can shoot them, eh? ­even if they are a hundred feet long!  Well, what else?”

Tom grinned before he spoke.

“Jaggers, sir!”

“Seldom out except of a night, Tom.”

“Fevers, sir!”

“Only in the low river-side parts, Tom.  We’re hundreds of feet above the river here.”

“Snakes in the grass, sir!”

“Pooh, Tom!  They always glide off when they hear one coming.”

“Not my sort, Mas’r Harry,” said Tom in an anxious whisper.  “They’re a dangerous sort, with a kind of captain, and he’s a half-breed.  If you will have it, and won’t listen to reason, you must.  Mas’r Harry, there’s snakes in the grass ­Indian-looking chaps who watch your every step, sir.  You haven’t thought it; but I’ve always been on the look-out, and as they’ve watched you, I’ve watched them.  But they got behind me to-day, Mas’r Harry, and saw me; and I don’t know what to think ­whether Muster Garcia has sent ’em, or whether they think you are looking for anything of theirs.  You don’t think it, Mas’r Harry, but at this very minute they’re busy at work watching us.”

I started slightly at one of his remarks, but passed it off lightly.

“Pooh, Tom!” I said.  “Who’s dreaming now?”

“Not me, Mas’r Harry.  I was never so wide awake in my life.  I tell you, sir, I’ve seen you poking and stirring up amongst the sticks and stones in all sorts of places, just as if you was looking for some old woman’s buried crock of crooked sixpences; and as soon as you’ve been gone these Indian chaps have come and looked, and stroked all the leaves and moss straight again.  You’re after something, Mas’r Harry, and they’re after something; but I can’t quite see through any of you yet.  Wants a good, stout, double-wicked six held the other side, and then I could read you both like a book.”

“Nonsense, Tom ­nonsense!” I cried; though I felt troubled, and a vague sense of uneasiness seemed to come over me.

“P’r’aps it is nonsense, Mas’r Harry ­perhaps it ain’t.  But this here ain’t Old England; so don’t you get thinking as there’s a policeman round every corner to come and help you, because there ain’t, no more than there’s a public-house round the corner to get half a pint when a fellow’s tongue’s dried up to his roof.  So now let’s understand one another, Mas’r Harry.  You’ve got to keep close up to the house.”

“Nonsense!” I exclaimed.  “What good would that do?  Look here, Tom, my good fellow:  I know you are faithful and true-hearted, but you have been following me about till you have found a mare’s nest and seen an enemy in every Indian.  You must learn to keep your place, Tom, and not to interfere.”

Tom did not answer ­he only looked sulky.  Then, spitting in his hands, he rubbed them together, crawled out of the bush, stood up, let his gun fall into the hollow of his arm, and then thrusting his hands into his pockets, stood looking at me, as if prepared for the worst.

“Going any farther, Mas’r Harry?” he said as I rose.

“Yes,” I said, “I’m going up this gorge.”

Then with Tom closely following, I climbed on till we were in a vast rift, whose sides were one mass of beautiful verdure spangled with bright blossoms.  High overhead, towering up and up, were the mountains, whose snow-capped summits glistened and flashed in the sun, while the ridges and ravines were either glittering and gorgeous or shadowy and of a deep, rich purple, fading into the blackness of night.

I stopped gazing around at the platform above platform of rock rising above me, and thought of what a magnificent site one of the flat table-lands would make for a town, little thinking that once a rich city had flourished there.  Even Tom seemed attracted by the beauty of the scene, for he stood gazing about till, seeing my intent, he came close behind me again, and together, with the traveller’s love of treading the fresh and untried soil, we pressed on, climbing over loose fragments of rock, peering into the stream that bubbled musically down the bottom of the gorge, wending our way through the high growth of long tangled grass, till the gorge seemed to plunge into darkness, a huge eminence blocking the way, in whose face appeared a low, broad archway, forming the entrance to a tunnel, leading who could tell where?

Any attempt to follow another track was vain, as I soon perceived; for, as I saw, the gorge seemed to be continued beneath the archway, while right and left the rock was precipitous beyond the possibility of climbing even to the shelves, where ancient trees had securely rooted themselves in the sparse soil, to hang over and lend their gloom to the sombre scene.

But in spite of its mystery there was a something attractive in the vast cavern, from which it now became evident the little river sprang; for it ran trickling out beneath the rocks we clambered over, till we stood gazing in towards the shadowy depth, listening to strange echoes of a murmuring rising and falling sound that dominated all the faint whispers that escaped, as it were, from time to time to the light of day.

“What do you think of this, Tom?” I said, after vainly trying to see the cavern’s extent.

“Think, Mas’r Harry?  Why, it looks to me like the front door to Bogyland.  But do let’s get back, sir; for I was never so hungry before in my life.  I say stop, Mas’r Harry ­what are you a-going to do?”

“Do!  Why, go in and explore the place, to be sure, Tom,” I cried, beginning to climb the rocky barrier that barred the way into the cavern.

“No, I say, pray don’t, Mas’r Harry!” cried Tom dolefully.  “I ain’t afraid in the light, when you can see what you are doing, but I can’t stand the dark, nohow.  Don’t go, Mas’r Harry.  Think of what your poor mother would say.”

“Hold your tongue, will you, you great calf!” I exclaimed angrily.

For an intense desire seemed to come over me to explore this dim, shadowy region.  For what might we not find there treasured?  It might be the ante-chamber to some rich, forgotten mine ­one of the natural storehouses from which the old Peruvians had been used to extract their vast treasures.  There were riches inexhaustible in the bowels of the earth, I knew, and if this were one of the gates by which they could be reached, held back from causes induced by cowardice I would not be ­I had too great a prize to win.

But before I had crossed this natural barrier to the entrance, reason told me that I must have light, and provision, and strength for the undertaking; and at that time I had neither.  There was nothing for it then but to listen to the voice of reason, as personified by Tom; and with a sigh I climbed back just as he was going to join me.

I saw plainly enough that it must be nightfall before we could reach home; and, getting free of the rocks, I was musing, and wondering whether, after all, I had hit upon a discovery, when Tom whispered to me, with averted head, to look to the right under the trees.

I did so, and became aware of a shadowy figure slinking off amongst the bushes, but I took little heed of it then, trudging on as fast as the nature of the ground would allow; and at last, thoroughly worn out in body, but with my imagination heated, I reached the hacienda.

That evening, when I was alone with my uncle, I mentioned my discovery, and asked him if ever the cavern had been explored.

“Never that I am aware of, Harry,” he said quietly; “and I don’t think it would profit much the explorer.  I have heard of the cave; it is a sort of sanctified place amongst the Indians, who people it with ghosts and goblins, such as they know how to invent.  Let me see, what do they call the place in their barbarous tongue?  Ah!  I remember now ­ Tehutlan.  I had forgotten its very existence.  One of the old Peruvian gods used to live there in olden times, I believe, as a sort of dragon to watch over the hidden treasures of the earth.  You had better search there and bring some of them out, or catch the dragon himself; he would make your fortune as an exhibitor in New York.”

“And you think, Uncle, it has never been explored?” I said, without replying to his last remark.

“My dear boy, for goodness’ sake give up dreaming and take to reality,” he said pettishly.  “Explored?  Yes.  I remember how they say the Spaniards explored it, and butchered a lot of the poor Peruvians there like so many sheep, but they found nothing.  Don’t think about treasure-seeking, Hal ­it’s a mistake; fortunes have to be made by toil and scheming, not by haphazard proceedings; but all the same I must say,” he added musingly, “they do tell of the golden ornaments and vessels of the sun-worship hidden by the poor conquered people ages ago to preserve them from their greedy conquerors.  Their places are known even now, they say, having been handed down from father to son.”

“But did you ever search?” I said eagerly.

“Who?  I?  Pooh!  Nonsense, Hal!  My idea always was that gold was to be grown, not searched for; but after all, I might just as well have gone upon a harum-scarum gold-hunt as have sunk my few poor hundreds here.”

The conversation was directly changed, for Garcia came in to take his evening cigar with the family, looking the while dark and scowling; but it had little effect upon me, for my thoughts were running upon the dim, mysterious cavern, with its echoes and shadows; and the more I thought, the more it seemed possible that a natural or an artificial discovery might there be made.  By artificial, I meant the finding of a buried treasure.  With the old profusion of gold in the land there must have been some rich mines.  Why might not this be one of them?

“Anyhow, I have nothing to lose,” I said to myself; and at last I retired to rest, excited with the thoughts of Lilla and the riches I might find ­the consequence being that I lay awake half the night, forming all sorts of impossible schemes; but above all determining that, come what might, I would explore the great cavern of Tehutlan ­if.  If what?  If I could find it again.