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He took a paper dollar out of his waistcoat pocket and handed it to me.

“Do two things,” he said, “and don’t talk; go out and get something to eat and after that hunt up a piece of quarter-inch pipe about two feet long; slip it up your coat sleeve and be at the entrance of the big circus tent at eight o’clock.”

I went out like a person who has suddenly fallen from the commonplace world into some story of the Arabian Nights.

There was about me and over the world a haze of adventure. The details of this adventure were not clear, but it was one directed against the crooked Mexican government, and it involved a treasure like the treasure of the sunken Armadas.

It was the alluring stuff of the storybooks. I was ready for it with these strange adventurers.

This state of feeling requires a word here.

After my father’s death, as I was now alone, I came down out of the great blue mountains to seek my fortune, as the storybooks say. I walked, and on the road I was overtaken by an adventure. Near a little village I passed one of those local trains, common to this country: an engine, one or two cars, and an old passenger coach. The highway passed close beside the track, and as I trudged along a fireman leaned out of the tender and called to me.