"There were other activities, too, which I shall not mention. You understand. Your father told me all about it, kept nothing back. Remember that I said he was my idea of a man; and if in his youth he had been wild and--well, seemed criminally inclined--I found that easy to forget. Certainly the manliness and sacrifice of his later years wiped out all this a thousand times. "Well, to proceed: Peter Drew and Adam Selden married Indian girls. Peter Drew won out in the fire dance and became a member of the Showut Poche-dakas. Adam Selden failed, and, according to the custom, took his wife from the tribe and lived with her elsewhere. Six months afterward the wife of Selden died. "Peter Drew, however, having become a recognized member of the tribe, was taken into their full confidence. According to their simple belief, he had conquered all obstacles that stood between him and this affiliation; therefore the gods had ordained that full trust should be placed in him. And with their beautiful faith and simplicity they did not question his honesty. So according to an old, old tradition of the tribe the white man was appointed Watchman of the Dead. "I know little of this story. All of the traditions of the Showut Poche-dakas are clouded, so far as our interpretation of them goes. But it appears, from what your father told me, that ages ago a white-skinned chief had been Watchman of the Dead. Mercy knows where he came from, for, so far as history goes, the whites had not then invaded the country. But after him, whenever a white-skinned man conquered the evil spirits of the fire and became a member, he was appointed Watchman of the Dead. So in the natural order of things the honour came to Peter Drew. "Up to this time the only other Watchman of the Dead remembered by even old Maquaquish and Chupurosa was the man called Bolivio. Holding this simple office, it seems that Bolivio had stumbled upon the secret so jealously guarded by the Showut Poche-dakas. He tried to turn this secret information to his own advantage, and in so doing he broke faith with the tribe that had adopted him as a brother. Found dead in the forest with a knife in his heart, is the abrupt climax of his tale of treachery. And so the tradition of the lost mine of Bolivio had its birth. "Centuries ago, no doubt, the Showut Poche-dakas discovered the spodumene gems which were responsible for the fiction concerning the lost mine of Bolivio. They polished them crudely and worshipped them. Spodumene gems always are found in pockets in the rock, and they are always hidden in wet clay in these pockets. Solid stone will be all about them, with no trace of disintegrated matter, until a pocket is struck. Therein will be found separate stones of varying sizes, always sealed in a natural vacuum, which in some way forever retains moisture in the clay.