The clamour of battle was no longer his guide. Now the Quest of the Little-Known was his. It brought him close to many hearths, and taught him the hearts of all sorts and conditions of men. In the span of a few years, it made him familiar with a hundred villages between Nain in the North and Rio de Janeiro in the South. He found comfort under the white lights of strange cities, and sought peace in various wildernesses. Under the canvas roof and the bark, as under the far-shining shelters of the town, came ever the dream of his old life for bedfellow. END OF PART I. PART TWO CHAPTER I. THE UNSUSPECTED CITY Hemming happened upon the city of Pernamba on the evening of a sultry day in April. He manifested no surprise beyond straightening his monocle in his eye. "Hope they have some English soda-water down there," he said to the heavy foliage about him, "but I suppose it would be hardly fair to expect an ice factory so far from the coast." For a second a vision of tall glasses and ice that clinked came to his mind's eye. He remembered the cool dining-rooms of his friends in Pernambuco. He spurred his native-bred steed to a hesitating trot along the narrow, hoof-worn path that led down to the valley. At a mud and timber hut set beneath banana-trees, and backed by a tiny field, he drew rein. A woman sat before the door, looking cool and at ease in her scanty cotton dress. A naked child chased a pig among the bananas. Hemming greeted the woman in Portuguese. She gave him humble greeting in return. The pig and the baby came near to listen. Hemming swung his feet free from the stirrups, to straighten the kink out of his knees. He pushed back his pith helmet, and lit a cigarette. "What is the name of the town?" he asked, smiling reassuringly. The woman told him, standing respectfully on the earthen threshold. Such square shoulders and clear eyes as this Englishman's were not every-day sights in Pernamba. "May a stranger find entertainment there?" he inquired. "Yes," she replied, "and the great man who owns it is generous to strangers. He is a big man, full of wisdom, smoking eternally a yellow cigar not of this country." Hemming dismounted, the better to rest his horse. Although he had ridden all that day and the day before, he felt no fatigue himself. The tropical sun, the narrow water-cut paths, and the clambering vines held in the heated air and luring him with strange flowers, brought him no terror. But he polished his monocle and sighed uneasily, for his store of _milreis_ had dwindled since leaving Pernambuco a week before to a sum equalling about eleven pounds in English money. "Has this man an army?" he asked. "Truly a great army," replied the woman, "for I have seen it myself, riding after thieves. It numbers five hundred men, all armed, and wearing white tunics, and all paid for by this man. He must be richer than a king to support so grand an army."