could see he was terribly upset about something. And that picture of the old fisherman! It was weird." She stopped suddenly. "But my dear man," she cried, "I don't believe we told you about that. You see, every time I got started Doctor Tennant always interrupted. That picture of the old fisherman was the craziest part of it. In the first place, Eughee talked about it all the time, hardly spoke of Katharine's portrait, which is really perfectly magnificent. He described this old fisherman, and, I don't care what Tennant says, he did say he haunted him. What really happened, of course, was that he was terribly nervous up there and had nobody to talk to, and he got obsessed by these fishermen he lived among. This one was frightfully old, almost a hundred I should say from his picture, and bent and twisted. Crippled by toil, Doctor Tennant said, and that was true. Apparently he and Eughee got to be very friendly. And this is the really craziest part of it. You see, Eughee had not been allowed to bring any of his painting things up there, that picture of Kath-. arine and a few little brushes or something to play with it. And so when he wanted to paint the old fellow Mrs. Mosby stopped unexpectedly. "Is that my train going out?" she asked. "Can you make out from here?" Trains seemed to be going out for all parts of the world, but, by that queerly developed sense of suburban America, Mrs. Mosby divined that hers was not. "So you see, there he was," she continued. "He told us how he sketched the old man in pencil, in pen and ink, on envelopes and writing-paper, all over the place. Oh, damn!" she surprisingly added. "That is my train. I see Harry Sawyer running." Almost instantly Mrs. Mosby was running too. At the top of the stairway that led down to the train level there was a momentary pause in her flight and a wave of an open hand that may have been anything, a gesture of farewell or even her end of the story. Certainly she had never made any other effort to finish it for me. I am certain that if I were to meet her tomorrow and refer to Eughee she would say, "Oh, yes, I know him. He does the most wonderful things," and would be not quite certain what sort of things she thought Eughee "did." As a matter of fact, he does very suitable portraits. Poligani exhibited his Mrs. Mortimer as "The Portrait of a Lady," and it attracted a great deal of attention. It is a big canvas and the shawl is magnificently red; and when it stood in Poligani's window it was startling enough to frighten horses in the street, if there were horses in those streets any more. Generally there was a group of two or three people before the window while it stood there. It was as sumptuous a presentment of human dust as ever looked through a gilt frame. I had to pass the portrait hanging there in the window twice every day, and twice I saw Tennant, whose offices are, I know, some where near by, standing in front of it. That second time I spoke to him and, remembering his scheme of buying the picture, asked him if it belonged to him. Evidently he had forgotten the idea, because he only smiled vaguely and continued to stare through the glass. "Imagine," he exclaimed of a sudden, pointing his stick at it, "that thing facing Eughee up there in one of those fishermen's shacks for three weeks-hung round his neck like the albatross on the Ancient Mariner." He had been standing lost in this sort of revery before the window when I caught sight of him, evidently. The comparison seemed to me unduly severe. It was really a very creditable piece of coloring. But Tennant brushed aside my objection with an irritated "I dare say; only," he added, "you weren't there that afternoon in his studio and you didn't hear the poor fellow pleading. Of course, he didn't know what he was doing. He imagined he was telling a rather amusing anecdote. I suppose he was stupid enough to hope even he couldn't have been stupid enough to believe that a woman like that"-and from some emotion the stick he pointed at the picture actually trembled "that a woman like that would understand. He even showed them the picture he had done." "I still maintain it's not so bad," I repeated. "Not that one," he snapped at me. "The other, the real one, the one of the old fellow, what did he call him? 'Old Ben Whalley,' the only picture Eughee probably ever painted in his life, the only picture he certainly ever will paint now. Just the old fellow standing idle for a moment, bent, twisted, discolored, looking out at you from beneath a battered hat, with his hands hanging, palms out, as though they had nail-prints in them almost." It was not a bad description of a picture probably, but the pavement in front of Poligani's was not quite a suitable platform, as I pointed out. "Even," I added, "if Eughee could do anything really worth while." "But he has done it, I tell you," Tennant insisted. The only consideration he paid my warning was to lower his voice and not to jab his stick at the window again. "I wouldn't believe it either if I were you. But think it over. I sent him up there with his 'nerves' and his 'fatigue' and all his other little maladies that came from doing silly little jobs like this and make him stare for three weeks at those other fellows. Don't you see what happened?" "That picture you described happened," I answered. "Exactly." Tennant patted my arm approvingly and turned again to the window. "The poor devil!" he exclaimed. "He'll never get that Albatross off his neck." "I should like to see it," I suggested. Tennant turned with a curiously blank look. "You mean the Ben Whalley?" I nodded. "That's rather curious," he said. "That woman the other day, Mrs.-erer-Mosby, didn't she explain?" "Mrs. Mosby," I answered, "probably never explained anything in her life. What is there to explain? What has happened to it?" "Nothing has happened to it," said Tennant. "Nothing ever can. It's probably the safest picture in the world. Of course, she thought you knew all the time. There it is in there, on the back of the other one. You see, he had no other canvas and probably began it as a sort of pastime, anyway; and there it is now posted on Mrs. Mortimer's back." Mrs. Mortimer's face, triumphantly calm, continued to regard us through the window. "No, you can't see it," said Tennant, in answer probably to some sudden gesture of mine. "It's all boarded up inside that superb gold frame, and Mrs. Mortimer has probably forgotten it's there by this time. The safest picture in the world." Momentarily we had forgotten where we were, and Tennant's voice was again unnecessarily loud. A man in the group on my other hand leaned over to the woman on his arm to explain. "They are saying it's some kind of trick picture," I heard him inform her. "It looks one way one side and another the other." And when Tennant and I walked on, the group were still standing there moving their heads from side to side, trying, I suppose, to discover the trick. As Tennant suggested, that seemed an unnecessary bit of Olympian malice toward poor dear Eughee. The San Blas Indians of Panama THEIR RIGHTS AND INDEPENDENCE BY ALFRED F. LOOMIS Author of "The Cruise of the Hippocampus," etc. ILLUSTRATIONS FROM PHOTOGRAPHS BY S. C. RUSSELL AND THE AUTHOR [EARLY this spring the San Blas Indians, whom I have endeavored to portray in the following article as a happy, peace-loving people, rebelled against the Panamanians, who had constituted themselves rulers of their territory and killed several, including a nephew of the governor, Señor Mojica. At about the same time the Indians implored the United States to free them of Panamanian domination, which they characterized as unjust and extortionate. A United States cruiser was despatched to the San Blas territory with American and Panamanian officials aboard, and before long it was announced by American Minister South that an agreement had been effected. By the agreement Panama was to continue her nominal control of the San Blas region and the Indians were to return the rifles and ammunition which they had captured; but the Indians were to be left free to maintain order among themselves, and the Panamanians were no longer to be allowed to impose schools upon the Indians. Thus it appears that the Indians have slightly bettered their position by their rebellious demonstration. A little more than two years ago, when I visited the San Blas country, Señor Mojica told me that the policy of the Panamanian government with respect to the Indians was one of "fraternization." He implied that by force of example the Panamanians were inducing the Indians to embrace the principles of modern civilization. My own definition of "fraternization," as formed by observation and instruction, is somewhat different. Before the Hippocampus, flying the United States ensign, had dropped anchor off the custom-house at Porvenir, we were warned in guarded tones by a kindly negro on a native sloop to "hoist the Panama flag before they fine you." The negro, needless to say, was not familiar with the protection afforded by the American flag; but it is by fines, taxes, unjust imprisonment, and corporal punishment that the Indians have actually been fraternized. It is to be hoped that this Indian nation of only 30,000 souls, survivors of the Spanish oppression which exterminated the Aztecs to north of them and the Incas to the south, will, after four centuries of jealously preserved freedom, be permitted to retain their independence. We Americans profess a lively regard for the welfare of small peoples. Here is a small people, only one hundred miles from our own Panama Canal, who would be more than grateful for a portion of our solicitude.] бог Nargana, which is also called Rio Diablo, is the show-place of the San Blas region. Occasional parties of Canal Zone tourists come to it, the Panamanians maintain a jail, custom-house, and barracks, and the white man's influence is revealed by the frame house. On only two other islands in the territory-Tupile and Porvenir-has the Panama government established itself. I' F there is one place in the world where the average yachtsman would not care to go aground or to exhibit any other lapse of seamanship it is in the Gulf of San Blas, in Panama, for among the cocoanut-covered, sun-filled islands of this placid gulf live a tribe of Indians who are instinctive masters of the sailing art. But, when grounding is an accomplished, although inadvertent fact, there are, by the same token, few places where one can be assured of quicker, more intelligent, or better-natured assistance in getting afloat. Consequently, when my wife and I, cruising together through this fairy-land of the tropics, saw the ground rise up to the keel of our stanch yawl, we felt in one instant the chagrin of disgracing ourselves under the eyes of experts, and in the next the exhilaration of having come to grief among helpful friends. Three cayucas tumbled out from the near-by village of Nargana, and in less time than it took me to stop our auxiliary engine and start it again in the reverse direction, we were boarded by seven Indians. No need to explain to them how it would be best to float us off, or to attempt to maintain command of my tight little craft-these half-naked, wild-looking, but thoroughly attractive savages took matters in their own hands immediately. By force of example I did convey to one little septuagenarian that his weight on the bow of the boat would help lighten her stern, and for a moment or two he and I danced in perfect abandon on the bowsprit, while the air was split by his shrill shouts of enjoyment. But the remaining half-dozen Indians, without waste of word or motion, ran out an anchor astern and hauled us into deep water. Then, for no expected reward beyond the joy of riding in a so-ulu (which is any boat that is not a cayuca, or dugout canoe), they remained aboard until we had left the shoals behind us and were safely out into deep water. In any attempt to describe the primitive people of Mongolian inheritance who live so close to our Panamanian possessions, first mention must be made of their boats and of their sailing ability. As boys from two years upward, these copper-colored Indians live in or on the water, first romping in the breakers on the coral reefs or sailing dugouts which seem no bigger than a pumpkin-seed, and then in maturity fishing, or conveying produce to Colon for sale. Such good sailors are they that it is a commonplace in Colon that "It's rough down San Blas way and nothing has come through but a couple of cayucas." What manner of craft is it that will venture out into storms severe enough to |