“That isn’t it,” I explained.  “Have you forgotten that we have been here for over a month?  You would find nothing.”  As he grasped my thought his face went white and he was silent.  So on the following morning we departed.

Our host furnished us with food, clothing, mules, and an arriero, not to mention a sorrowful farewell and a hearty blessing.  From the door of the hacienda he waved his sombrero as we disappeared around a bend in the mountain-pass; we had, perhaps, been a welcome interruption in the monotony of his lonely existence.

We were led upward for many miles until we found ourselves again in the region of perpetual snow.  There we set our faces to the south.  From the arriero we tried to learn how far we then were from the cave of the devil, but to our surprise were informed that he had never heard of the thing.

We could see that the question made him more than a little suspicious of us; often, when he thought himself unobserved, I caught him eyeing us askance with something nearly approaching terror.

We journeyed southward for eleven days; on the morning of the twelfth we saw below us our goal.  Six hours later we had entered the same street of Cerro de Pasco through which we had passed formerly with light hearts; and the heart which had been gayest of all we had left behind us, stilled forever, somewhere beneath the mountain of stone which she had herself chosen for her tomb.

Almost the first person we saw was none other than Felipe, the arriero.  He sat on the steps of the hotel portico as we rode up on our mules.  Dismounting, I caught sight of his white face and staring eyes as he rose slowly to his feet, gazing at us as though fascinated.

I opened my mouth to call to him, but before the words left my lips he had let out an ear-splitting yell of terror and bounded down the steps and past us, with arms flying in every direction, running like one possessed.  Nor did he return during the few hours that we remained at the hotel.

Two days later found us boarding the yacht at Callao.  When I had discovered, to my profound astonishment, at the hacienda, that another year had taken us as far as the tenth day of March, I had greatly doubted if we should find Captain Harris still waiting for us.  But there he was; and he had not even put himself to the trouble of becoming uneasy about us.

As he himself put it that night in the cabin, over a bottle of wine, he “didn’t know but what the senora had decided to take the Andes home for a mantel ornament, and was engaged in the little matter of transportation.”

But when I informed him that “the senora” was no more, his face grew sober with genuine regret and sorrow.  He had many good things to say of her then; it appeared that she had really touched his salty old heart.

“She was a gentle lady,” said the worthy captain; and I smiled to think how Desiree herself would have smiled at such a characterization of the great Le Mire.