"And believe me, Mr. Mink," I added, my voice trembling with emotion, "no Academician is likely to go to sleep when I illustrate my address with such pictures as you are now about to take!" "The police might pull the show," he suggested. "No," said I, "Science is already immune; art is becoming so. Only nature need fear the violence of prejudice; and doubtless she will continue to wear pantalettes and common-sense nighties as long as our great republic endures." I unslung my field-glasses, adjusted them and took a penetrating squint at the hillside above. Nothing stirred up there except a buzzard or two wheeling on tip-curled pinions above the palms. Presently Mink inquired whether I had "lamped" anything, and I replied that I had not. "They may be snoozin' in their caves," he suggested. "But don't you fret, old top; you'll get what's comin' to you and I'll get mine." "About that check--" I began and hesitated. "Sure. What about it?" "I suppose I'm to give it to you when the first cave-woman appears." "That's what!" I pondered the matter for a while in silence. I could see no risk in paying him this draft on sight. "All right," I said. "Bring on your cave-dwellers." Hour succeeded hour, but no cave-dwellers came down to the pool to drink. We ate luncheon--a bit of cold duck, some koonti-bread, and a dish of palm-cabbage. I smoked an inexpensive cigar; Mink lit a more pretentious one. Afterward he played on his concertina at my suggestion on the chance that the music might lure a cave-girl down the hill. Nymphs were sometimes caught that way, and modern science seems to be reverting more and more closely to the simpler truths of the classics which, in our ignorance and arrogance, we once dismissed as fables unworthy of scientific notice. [Illustration: "He played on his concertina ... on the chance that the music might lure a cave-girl down the hill."] However this Broadway faun piped in vain: no white-footed dryad came stealing through the ferns to gaze, perhaps to dance to the concertina's plaintive melodies. So after a while he put his concertina into his pocket, cocked his derby hat on one side, gathered his little bandy legs under his person, and squatted there in silence, chewing the wet and bitter end of his extinct cigar. Toward mid-afternoon I unslung my field-glasses again and surveyed the hill. At first I noticed nothing, not even a buzzard; then, of a sudden, my attention was attracted to something moving among the fern-covered slabs of coquina just above where we lay concealed--a slim, graceful shape half shadowed under a veil of lustrous hair which glittered like gold in the sun. "Mink!" I whispered hoarsely. "One of them is coming! This--this indeed is the stupendous and crowning climax of my scientific career!"