No less was Lewis’s wonder at the stranger’s raiment.  A pith helmet, Norfolk jacket, moleskin riding-breeches, leather puttees, and stout, pigskin footwear—­these were strange apparel.

The stranger was not old.  One would have placed him at forty-five.  As a matter of fact, he was only forty.  He was the first to recover poise.  He peered keenly into Lewis’s face.

“May I ask your name?”

“My name is Lewis Leighton.  And yours?”

The stranger waved his hand impatiently.

“Where are you going?”

“I am on my way to Oeiras to seek employment,” said Lewis.

“To seek employment, eh?” said the stranger, thoughtfully.  “Will you tell this misbegotten guide that I wish to return to the water we passed a little while ago?  I should like to talk to you, if you don’t mind.”

Lewis translated the order.

“So they are words, after all,” said the guide.  He shook his head from side to side, as one who suspects witchcraft.

When the pack-train was headed back on the road it had come, Lewis turned to the guide.

“Whither was your master bound?” he asked.

“Him?” said the guide, with a shrug of his shoulder.  “Who knows?  No sooner does he reach one town than he is off for another.  It is his life, the madman, to bore a hole through this world of Christ.  Just now we were headed for the ranch of Dom Francisco.  After that, who knows?  But he pays, friend.  Gold oozes from him like matter from a sore.”

They came to a spring.  The stranger ordered up the fly of a tent.  From his baggage he took two wonderful folding-chairs and a folding-table, opened them, and placed them under the fly.  “Sit down,” he said to Lewis.

The stranger took off his helmet and tossed it on the ground.  Lewis pulled off his hat hurriedly and laid it aside.  The stranger looked at him long and earnestly.

“Are you hungry?”

Lewis shrugged his shoulders.

“One can always eat,” he said.

“Good,” said the stranger.  “Please tell these loafers to off-load the mules and set camp.  And call that one here—­the black fellow with a necklace of chickens.”

Lewis did as he was bidden.  The man with the chickens stood before the stranger and grinned.

The stranger raised his eyes on high.

“Ah, God,” he said, “I give Thee thanks that at last I can talk to this low-browed, brutal son of a degenerate race of cooks.”  He turned to Lewis.  “Tell him,” he continued—­“tell him that I never want to see anything boiled again unless it’s his live carcass boiling in oil.  Tell him that I hate the smell, the sight, and the sound of garlic.  Tell him that jerked beef is a fitting sustenance for maggots, but not for hungering man.  Tell him there is a place in the culinary art for red peppers, but not by the handful.  Tell him, may he burn hereafter as I have burned within and lap up with joy the tears that I have shed in pain.  Tell him—­tell him that.”