warmly grasped his hand. He held Charles'
palm and addressed his brother in a passionate flood of protest and
assertion: Charles Abbott, his dear friend, was as good a patriot as
any Escobar, and they should all embrace him in gratitude and welcome;
he was, if not the gold of the United States, its unselfish and
devoted heart; his presence here, his belief in them, was an
indication of what must follow.

"If he were killed," Andres explained. "That alone would bring us an
army; the indignation of his land would fall like a mountain on our
enemies."

This, giving Charles a fresh view of his usefulness, slightly cooled
his ardor; he was willing to accept it, in his exalted state he would
make any sacrifice for the ideal that had possessed him; but there was
an acceptance of brutal unsentimental fact in the Latin fibre of the
Escobars foreign to his own more romantic conceptions. Vincente wasn't
much carried away by the possibility Andres revealed.

"He'd be got out of the way privately," he explained in his drained
voice; "polite letters and no more, regrets, would be exchanged. The
politicians of Washington are not different from those of Cuba. If he
is wise he will see Havana as an idler. Even you, Andres, do not know
yet what is waiting for you. It is one thing to conspire in a balcony
on the Prado and another to lie in the marshes of Camagueey. You cannot
realize how desperate Spain is with the debt left from her wars with
Morocco and Chile and Peru. Cuba, for a number of years, has been her
richest possession. While the Spaniards were paying taxes of three
dollars and twenty some cents, we, in Cuba, were paying six dollars
and sixty-nine. After our declaration of independence at Manzanillo--"
an eloquent pause left his hearers to the contemplation of what had
followed.

"You know how it has gone with us," Vincente continued, almost
exclusively to the younger Escobar. "Carlos Cespedes left his practice
of the law at Bayamo for a desperate effort with less than a hundred
and thirty men. But they were successful, and in a few weeks we had
fifteen thousand, with the constitution of a republican government
drawn. We ended slavery," here, for a breath, he addressed Charles
Abbott. "But in that," he specified, "we were different from you. In
the United States slavery was considered as only a moral wrong. Your
Civil War was, after all, an affair of philanthropy; while we freed
the slaves for economic reasons.

"Well,