tions, not so resolute. He had made up his mind to go again, this time alone; but days dragged by. He lived in my hut. He jumped each time a gamecock crowed, every time a door was closed. He was a nervous shadow, not even as strong as he had been when I saw him first. He had escaped from a sanatorium up north, and come back here secretly, I discovered. I decided to send a message to his father. When that message did go it was somewhat different from what I intended.
I was a bachelor then, Señor. The little spiders, the malichos, spun their webs where they would on the rafters of my hut. I did not care. The mice played around freely at night; for my striped cat was old and fat, sleeping much and doing little.
To keep the young Americano from those sudden screeching fits, though, I had to climb up with a broom and wipe away the spider webs. They would build new ones. It did not matter.
"I can't stand them!" he would wail, shuddering all over. I thought to myself then there was little danger he ever would go again into the Madre d'Oro Mine. And that was true. He never went again.
That very night as I slept in my blankets on the floor, I was awakened suddenly. Señor Lester had leapt up, screaming as I hope I never hear another man or woman scream! He jumped around. I could not quiet him. I made a light hurriedly, hearing him fall to the floor.
He was stiffening then, head arched back.
"It bit me! I killed it!" he shrieked. Then came a final shudder, and he went limp—dead!
Now that was too fast even for the bite of a great pit-viper. I tried to find what had killed him. His two hands had been clenched together, but now in death they relaxed. I drew them apart. I knew the truth, and my heart went faint within me. He had been dreaming of the hairy spiders, when
Crushed between the palms of his thin, nervous hands, was the dead body of a small mouse!
To a Bullet-Pierced Skull
By Alfred I. Tooke
An empty skull! But once, no doubt, a vast
Amount of knowledge into you was passed,
And stored for use whenever you required;
But when a bullet into you was fired,
All of those years of hoarded knowledge fled
In one split second, as you tumbled, dead.
Only the knowledge parted with lived on.
What you had hoarded, in a flash was gone.
Life is like that! It's those who give the most,
Who may be truly said to live the most;
While those who hoard their knowledge find life dull,
And leave behind nought but an empty skull.
