Did you go ?" "Yes--up into the Rio Abaste country where they had discovered diamonds as big as hens' eggs--one had been sold for nearly a quarter of a million dollars--and everybody was crazy.

I didn't find any diamonds nor anything else but starvation, so I herded cattle, that being the only thing I knew anything about--how to ride--and slept out on the lowlands sometimes under a native mat and sometimes under the kindly stars.

Then we had a revolution and cattle raids, and one night I came pretty near being chewed up by a puma--and so it went.

I made a little money in rawhides after I got to know the natives, and I'm going back to make some more; and you are going with me when we get things straightened out.

I wouldn't have come home except that I heard you had been turned out neck and crop from Kennedy Square.