“You’ll come with us!” Silent Sven commanded, grasping Black Eric by the shoulder and dragging him along. Silent and awed, the crowd proceeded through the tangle of weeds and young trees to the side of the hut between the two oaks. Some of the men began to poke around with their sticks, but Olga stopped them. The old man motioned silently to a depression in the ground. “It is long ago,” he whispered. “The grave--is sunken.” Olga fell on her knees, sobbing convulsively. She reached out her hands and reverently brushed aside the leaves that lay upon the grave, then started up, a cry of terror on her lips. Within the depression, where she had scraped the leaves away, a human skeleton lay bleaching, stained almost to the colour of brown twigs. As they bent over they saw a skull, through the sockets of which rose the slender spires of a plant, covering it mercifully with clusters of purplish-blue flowers. A rusty iron cross lay beside it. “That is--that is where she lay--when we came up,” quavered the old man. “She lay there----” The women began to sob unrestrainedly, Kaisa’s voice wailing above the others. The men turned upon Black Eric, their sticks raised high, terror forgotten in a mighty wave of revenge that swept its fire over them. “It isn’t true!” he gasped, his teeth clicking together. “It isn’t, I tell you! Haven’t we seen her--all these years? Didn’t we--see her--this----” Before the look in their faces he slunk away. He stumbled past the hut, the thorny branches reaching out their hands, catching him, tearing his clothes. On down the path, his terrified flight impeded by the gnarled roots. Behind him followed a human avalanche, great cries issuing from their throats, sticks raised, ready to strike. Silent Sven fought his way to the front, called them to silence. “Let him go!” His voice rang out. “Let him go! His fear will punish him, far, far more than we could punish him! It will follow him, as it has followed him all these years. But never again will it affect us, and _she_ is at rest!” Before him, in the gap left by the branches, lay the river, coiling and twisting in the sun, a waiting, hungry look upon its face. THE BAMBOO TRAP BY ROBERT S. LEMMON From _Short Stories_ “A letter, _patrón_.” One corner of the mosquito bar that made of the tent fly an airy, four-walled room was lifted and a brown hand thrust in the envelope with its array of foreign postmarks and smudgy thumb-prints, all but concealing the familiar American stamp. Outside, the steady roar of the Chanchan River, softened by distance as it charged down the last pitches of the Andes on its way to the Gulf of Guayaquil and the Pacific, blended into a musical background for the messenger’s guttural voice.