When his senses returned, he found himself staring blankly at a blue sky, a sky that shone gloriously through a fairy lacework of branches of trees laden with apple blossom; while a sweet and subtle scent was pungent in his nostrils, and undoubtedly gave rise to the quaint notion which instantly possessed him, that he was already dead, and translated to a land of everlasting spring. Then he knew that he was still clothed in skins, that his bones ached, that he was hungry and athirst; so this could be neither death nor immortality. Suddenly, a savage face bent over him, his head was lifted, and he was given some liquid. It tasted like cider, and he drank copiously. Then his brain reeled; for he was in no fit condition to withstand a draft of singular potency, and again the mists came, and he lapsed into the void. He did not recover full consciousness that day. The Indians, who had heard and been amazed at his singing, saw him drop from the precipice, and ran to its base, expecting to find a mangled corpse. But a tall and slender pine had thrust its straight shaft into the stout skin coat he wore, and had bent until it yielded to the strain, and broke. Thus, he fell with enough force to knock the wits out of him; but the major catastrophe was averted, and the Indians were awed by an incident which no patriarch of the tribe had witnessed before, nor would ever see again if he attained the age of Methuselah. The spear, which had left Power's hand when he was in the air, had buried its eight inches of blade in a fallen treetrunk, and had to be hewed out with an ax. These things the white necromancer learned afterward. He found also that his vision of apple blossom was no dream, but reality. Three centuries ago Jesuit missionaries had crossed the Andes by that very pass. They brought, as peace offerings to the Indians, some of the fruit-trees and cereals of more favored climes; but they were murdered without parley. Curiosity, perhaps, led the savages to plant the trees and seeds; the apples alone, finding a congenial soil, throve marvelously. All that region abounds in sweet, wild apples, from which the Indians concoct a fermented liquor which they call _chi-chi_. Those same apples, and the orgies of drunkenness to which they give rise, probably account for the legend of a great city existing within the untrodden depths of the Cordillera. But there is no city--no trace of civilization save the apples, a kindly memento of the unfortunate Jesuits. * * * * * And now Power began his regenerative work anew.