“But, professor,” said the musical voice, “I thought there was a law that water always seeks its own level. So how can there be empty places below sea-level?” “It’s the fault of the aneroid barometer, my dear. We were very comfortable and commonplace until that came along and revealed anomalies. The secret lies, I suppose, in the trend of the strata, which is generally north and south. You see the ridges cropping out all through the desert; and there’s a good deal of lava oozing over them, too. They probably act as walls, to prevent the sea getting in from the west, or the Colorado leaking in from the east.” “In that case,” remarked the general, “a little more seismic disturbance might produce a change.” “It would have to be more than a little, I suspect,” returned Meschines. “Kamaiakan told me that the Indians have a prophecy that a great lake will come back and make the desert fruitful, and that there are some who know the very place where the water will begin to flow.” And here the hammock, with a final convulsion, gave birth to a beautiful young woman, in a diaphanous silk dress and a white lace mantilla. She crossed the veranda, and seated herself on the broad arm of her father’s chair. “Why, that’s important!” said the general, arching his brows. “I wonder if Kamaiakan is one of those who know the place? If so, it might be worth his while to let me into the secret.” “Oh, you couldn’t go there! It’s enchanted, and people who go near it die. There are bones all about there, now.” “This Kamaiakan appears to be a remarkable personage: where did you pick him up?” inquired the professor. “It was rather the other way,” Trednoke replied, taking one of his daughter’s hands in his, and caressing it. “We are appendages to Kamaiakan. You look so natural, sitting there, Meschines, that I forget it’s thirty years since we met, and that all the significant events of my life have happened in that time,--the Mexican war, my marriage, and the rest of it! I have been a widower ten years.” “And I’ve been a bachelor for over sixty!” said Meschines, with a queer expression. “Your wife was Spanish, was she not?” “Her father was a Mexican of Andalusian descent. But her mother was descended from the race of Azatlan: there are records and relics indicating that her ancestors were princes in Tenochtitlan before Cortez made trouble there.” “And I’ve been losing my heart to a princess, and never realized my audacity!” exclaimed the professor, laying his hand on his waistcoat and making an obeisance to Miriam. She tossed her free foot, and played with the fringe of her reboso. “I will tell my maid to look for it,” she said; “but I think you must have left it in papa’s curiosity-room.” “No: I’m an Aztec sacrifice!” cried the professor; and they all laughed. “One would hardly have anticipated,” he resumed after a pause, addressing Trednoke, “that you would have made a double conquest,--first of the men, and then of the woman!”