The sudden illness of their botanist-in-chief cast a gloom upon the party, and utterly spoiled the festive intentions of young Aragon. Lorenzo was put to bed, from which retreat, at midnight, his fearful groans summoned the colonel to his side. The latter found him tossing and murmuring, but incapable of uttering a word. His faithful Eusebio, at the head of the bed, answered for him. The honest fellow feared lest his master might have caught again a touch of the old fever which had formerly attacked him in searching for cascarillas in the environs of Tipoani in Bolivia. These symptoms, recurring in the lower valleys of the Cconi, would make it impossible for the brave explorer safely to continue with the party. As the mestizo propounded this inconvenient theory, a new burst of groans from the examinador seemed to confirm it. The grave news brought all the party to the sick bed. Colonel Perez, whom the touching comparison of wives made in the hammocks of Morayaca had sensibly attached to Lorenzo, endeavored to feel his pulse; but the patient, drawing in his hand by a peevish movement, only rolled himself more tightly in his blanket, and increased his groans to roars. Presently, exhausted by so much agony, he fell into a slumber. 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."