John De Graffenreid Atwood ate of the lotus, root, stem, and flower. The tropics gobbled him up. He enthusiastically into his work, which was to try to forget Rosine.  
Now, they who dine on the lotus rarely consume it plain. There is a sauce au diable that goes with it; and the distillers are the chefs who prepare it. And on Johnny's menu card it read "brandy." With a bottle between them, he and Billy Keogh would sit on the porch of the little at night and roar out great, indecorous songs, until the natives, slipping hastily past, would a shoulder and mutter things to themselves about the "Americanos diablos."
 
One day Johnny's mozo brought the mail and dumped it on the table. Johnny leaned from his hammock, and fingered the four or five letters dejectedly. Keogh was sitting on the edge of the table chopping lazily with a paper knife at the legs of a centipede that was crawling among the . Johnny was in that phase of lotus-eating when all the world tastes bitter in one's mouth.
 
"Same old thing!" he complained. "Fool people writing for information about the country. They want to know all about raising fruit, and how to make a fortune without work. Half of 'em don't even send stamps for a reply. They think a hasn't anything to do but write letters. those envelopes for me, old man, and see what they want. I'm feeling too rocky to move."
 
Keogh, beyond all possibility of ill-humour, drew his chair to the table with smiling on his rose-pink , and began to slit open the letters. Four of them were from citizens in various parts of the United States who seemed to regard the consul at Coralio as a cyclopædia of information. They asked long lists of questions, numerically arranged, about the climate, products, possibilities, laws, business chances, and statistics of the country in which the consul had the honour of representing his own government.
 
"Write 'em, please, Billy," said that official, "just a line, referring them to the latest report. Tell 'em the State Department will be delighted to furnish the literary . Sign my name. Don't let your pen scratch, Billy; it'll keep me awake."
 
"Don't snore," said Keogh, , "and I'll do your work for you. You need a of assistants, anyhow. Don't see how you ever get out a report. Wake up a minute!—here's one more letter—it's from your own town, too—Dalesburg."
 
"That so?" murmured Johnny showing a mild and interest. "What's it about?"
 
"Postmaster writes," explained Keogh. "Says a citizen of the town wants some facts and advice from you. Says the citizen has an idea in his head of coming down where you are and opening a shoe store. Wants to know if you think the business would pay. Says he's heard of the boom along this coast, and wants to get in on the ground floor."
 
In spite of the heat and his bad temper, Johnny's hammock swayed with his laughter. Keogh laughed too; and the pet monkey on the top shelf of the bookcase in sympathy with the reception of the letter from Dalesburg.
 
"Great bunions!" exclaimed the consul. "Shoe store! What'll they ask about next, I wonder? Overcoat factory, I reckon. Say, Billy—of our 3,000 citizens, how many do you suppose ever had on a pair of shoes?"
 
Keogh reflected .
 
"Let's see—there's you and me and—"
 
"Not me," said Johnny, and incorrectly, holding up a foot encased in a disreputable deerskin zapato. "I haven't been a victim to shoes in months."
 
"But you've got 'em, though," went on Keogh. "And there's Goodwin and Blanchard and Geddie and old Lutz and Doc Gregg and that Italian that's agent for the banana company, and there's old Delgado—no; he wears sandals. And, oh, yes; there's Madama Ortiz, 'what kapes the hotel'—she had on a pair of red at the baile the other night. And Miss Pasa, her daughter, that went to school in the States—she brought back some notions in the way of footgear. And there's the comandante's sister that dresses up her feet on feast-days—and Mrs. Geddie, who wears a two with a Castilian instep—and that's about all the ladies. Let's see—don't some of the soldiers at the cuartel—no: that's so; they're allowed shoes only when on the march. In barracks they turn their little toeses out to grass."
 
"' right," agreed the consul. "Not over twenty out of the three thousand ever felt leather on their walking arrangements. Oh, yes; Coralio is just the town for an enterprising shoe store—that doesn't want to part with its goods. Wonder if old Patterson is trying to jolly me! He always was full of things he called jokes. Write him a letter, Billy. I'll it. We'll jolly him back a few."
 
Keogh dipped his pen, and wrote at Johnny's dictation. With many pauses, filled in with smoke and travellings of the bottle and glasses, the following reply to the Dalesburg communication was perpetrated:
 
 
Mr. Obadiah Patterson,
Dalesburg, Ala.
 
Dear Sir: In reply to your favour of July 2d, I have the honour to inform you that, according to my opinion, there is no place on the habitable globe that presents to the eye stronger evidence of the need of a first-class shoe store than does the town of Coralio. There are 3,000 inhabitants in the place, and not a single shoe store! The situation speaks for itself. This coast is rapidly becoming the goal of enterprising business men, but the shoe business is one that has been sadly overlooked or neglected. In fact, there are a considerable number of our citizens actually without shoes at present.
 
Besides the want above mentioned, there is also a crying need for a , a college of higher mathematics, a coal yard, and a clean and intellectual Punch and Judy show. I have the honour to be, sir,
 
Your Obt. Servant,
 
John De Graffenreid Atwood,
U. S. Consul at Coralio.
 
P.S.—Hello! Uncle Obadiah. How's the old burg racking along? What would the government do without you and me? Look out for a green-headed parrot and a bunch of bananas soon, from your old friend
 
Johnny.
 
 
"I throw in that postscript," explained the consul, "so Uncle Obadiah won't take offence at the official tone of the letter! Now, Billy, you get that correspondence up, and send Pancho to the post-office with it. The Ariadne takes the mail out to-morrow if they make up that load of fruit to-day."
 
The night programme in Coralio never . The recreations of the people were soporific and flat. They wandered about, barefoot and aimless, speaking lowly and smoking cigar or cigarette. Looking down on the dimly lighted ways one seemed to see a threading of brunette ghosts with a procession of insane fireflies. In some houses the thrumming of guitars added to the depression of the triste night. Giant tree-frogs in the as loudly as the end man's "bones" in a minstrel . By nine o'clock the streets were almost .
 
Nor at the consulate was there often a change of bill. Keogh would come there nightly, for Coralio's one cool place was the little seaward porch of that official residence.
 
The brandy would be kept moving; and before midnight sentiment would begin to stir in the heart of the self-exiled consul. Then he would relate to Keogh the story of his ended romance. Each night Keogh would listen patiently to the tale, and be ready with untiring sympathy.
 
"But don't you think for a minute"—thus Johnny would always conclude his woeful narrative—"that I'm grieving about that girl, Billy. I've forgotten her. She never enters my mind. If she were to enter that door right now, my pulse wouldn't gain a beat. That's all over long ago."
 
"Don't I know it?" Keogh would answer. "Of course you've forgotten her. Proper thing to do. Wasn't quite O. K. of her to listen to the knocks that—er—Dink Pawson kept giving you."
 
"Pink Dawson!"—a world of contempt would be in Johnny's tones—"Poor white trash! That's what he was. Had five hundred acres of farming land, though; and that counted. Maybe I'll have a chance to get back at him some day. The Dawsons weren't anybody. Everybody in Alabama knows the Atwoods. Say, Billy—did you know my mother was a De Graffenreid?"
 
"Why, no," Keogh would say; "is that so?" He had heard it some three hundred times.
 
"Fact. The De Graffenreids of Hancock County. But I never think of that girl any more, do I, Billy?"
 
"Not for a minute, my boy," would be the last sounds heard by the of Cupid.
 
At this point Johnny would fall into a gentle , and Keogh would saunter out to his own under the calabash tree at the edge of the .
 
In a day or two the letter from the Dalesburg postmaster and its answer had been forgotten by the Coralio exiles. But on the 26th day of July the fruit of ............