In the morning the examinador, in a dolorous voice, announced that he should be obliged to return to Cuzco.  This resolution might have seemed the obstinate delirium of the fever but for the mournful and pathetic calmness of the victim.  Eusebio, he said, should return with him as far as Chile-Chile, where a conveyance could be had; and he himself would give such explicit instructions to the cascarilleros that nothing would be lost by his absence to the purposes of the expedition.  Yielding to pity and friendship, the colonel gave in his adhesion to the plan, and even proposed his own hammock as a sort of palanquin, and the loan of a pair of the peons for bearers.  They could return with Eusebio to Sausipata, where the party would be obliged to wait for the three.  After sketching out his plan, Colonel Perez looked for approval to Mr. Marcoy, and received an affirmative nod.  The proposition seemed so agreeable to the sick man that already an alleviation of his misery appeared to be superinduced.  He even smiled intelligently as he rolled into the hammock.  In a very short time he made a sort of theatrical exit, borne in the hammock like an invalid princess, and fanned with a palm branch out of the garden by the faithful Eusebio.

“Poor devil!” said Perez as the mournful procession departed:  “who knows if he will ever see his dear wife at Sorata, or if he will even live to reach Chile-Chile?”

“Do you really think him in any such danger?” asked the more suspicious Marcoy.

“Danger!  Did you not see his miserable appearance as he left us?”

“I saw an appearance far from miserable, and therefore I am convinced that the man is no more sick than you or I.”

On hearing such a heartless heresy the colonel stepped back from his comrade with a shocked expression, and asked what had given him such an idea.

“A number of things, of which I need only mention the principal.  In the first place, the man’s sickness falling on him like a thunder-clap; next, his haste in catching back his hand when you tried to feel his pulse; and then his smile, at once happy and mischievous, when you offered him the peons and he found his stratagem succeeding beyond his hopes.”

“Why, now, to think of it!” said the colonel sadly; “but what could have been his motive?”

“This gentleman is too delicate to sustain our kind of life,” suggested Marcoy.  “He is tired of skinning his hands and legs in our service, and eating peccary, monkey and snails as we do.  His Bolivians are perhaps quite as useful for our service, and while he is rioting at Cuzco we may be enriching ourselves with cinchonas.”

In effect, on the return of the peons ten days after, the examinador was reported to have got quit of his fever shortly after leaving Sausipata, and to have borne the journey to Chile-Chile remarkably well.  He charged his men to take back his compliments and the regrets he felt, at not being able to keep with the company.