Page:Civilization and barbarism (1868).djvu/78

34 so famous a master, are his sons. The story is that his best horse-trappings were once stolen while he was absent on a journey to Buenos Ayres. His wife covered one of the thief's footprints with a tray. Two months afterwards Calibar returned, looked at the footprint, which by that time had become blurred, and could not have been made out by other eyes, after which he spoke no more of the circumstance. A year and a half later, Calibar might have been seen walking through a street in the outskirts of the town with his eyes on the ground. He turned into a house, where he found his trappings, by that time blackened by use and nearly worn out. He had come upon the trail of the thief nearly two years after the robbery.

In 1830, a criminal under sentence of death having escaped from prison, Calibar was employed to search for him. The unhappy man, aware that he would be tracked, had taken all the precautions suggested to him by the image of the scaffold, but they were taken in vain. Perhaps they only assured his destruction; for as Calibar's reputation was hazarded, his jealous self-esteem made him ardent in accomplishing a task which would demonstrate the wonderful sharpness of his sight, though it insured the destruction of another man. The fugitive had left as few traces as the nature of the ground would permit; he had crossed whole squares on tiptoe; afterwards he had leaped upon low walls; he had turned back after crossing one place; but Calibar followed without losing the trail. If he missed the way for a moment, he found it again, exclaiming, "Where are you?" Finally, the trail entered a water-course in the suburbs, in which the