my darling and heroic son would approve; he would wish me
to be his butcher."

Andres, harder, more mature, than the elder, stopped such expressions
of sentiment. It would make such a mess, he reminded them; and then,
how far could the servants, the hysterical negroes, be depended upon?
They would soon discover the progress of such an operation.

Charles suggested fire, but the Spanish stoves, with shallow cups for
charcoal, were useless, and the ovens were cold; it would create
suspicion to set them to burning so late in the day. "Since we can't
get rid of it," Charles declared, "we must accept it. The body is
there, but whose is it? Did you send a servant to Matanzas?"

Two had gone, riding, once they were beyond Havana, furiously. A
Jamaican negro, huge and black, totally unlike Vincente, and a Cuban
newly in the city, a mestizo, brought in from the Escobars' small
sugar estate near Madriga. Andres at once appropriated Charles' idea.
Their mother and Narcisa, he proclaimed, must go out as usual for
their afternoon drive, and he would secure some clothes that belonged
to Juan Roman, the servant. No one in the back of the house, luckily,
had seen the riders leave. Judged more faithful than the rest, they
had been sent away as secretly as possible.

"What," Charles Abbott asked, "caused his death?" Andres faced him
coldly. "This pig of a countryman I killed," he said. "The Spanish
will understand that. They have killed a multitude of us, for
nothing, for neglect in polishing the back of a boot. It will be
more difficult with the servants,--they are used to kindness,
consideration, here; but they, too, in other places, have had their
lesson. And I was drunk."

In spite of Charles' insistence, he was not permitted to assist in the
carrying out of the details that followed. He sat, walked about, alone
in the drawing-room. After an interminable wait he heard the report,
faint and muffled by walls, of a pistol, and then running feet passed
the door. Domingo appeared first, a glass of brandy in his shaking
hand:

"He has gone, in a sack, to be thrown into the sea ... the blood hid
his face. Ah, Jesu! But it was successful--a corporal looked, with the
hundred doblons I pressed into his hand. He kicked the body three
times, thrust a knife into it, and said that there, anyhow, was one
less Cuban." Andres entered the room and, without speech, embraced
Charles, kissing him on either cheek; and soon Carmita Escobar and
Narc