l
roundabout postal way through Cayta, and up the coast by steamer. Don
Jose, who had been waiting for the mail in the Goulds' drawing-room, got
out of the rocking-chair, letting his hat fall off his knees. He rubbed
his silvery, short hair with both hands, speechless with the excess of
joy.

"Emilia, my soul," he had burst out, "let me embrace you! Let me--"

Captain Mitchell, had he been there, would no doubt have made an apt
remark about the dawn of a new era; but if Don Jose thought something
of the kind, his eloquence failed him on this occasion. The inspirer
of that revival of the Blanco party tottered where he stood. Mrs. Gould
moved forward quickly and, as she offered her cheek with a smile to her
old friend, managed very cleverly to give him the support of her arm he
really needed.

Don Jose had recovered himself at once, but for a time he could do no
more than murmur, "Oh, you two patriots! Oh, you two patriots!"--looking
from one to the other. Vague plans of another historical work, wherein
all the devotions to the regeneration of the country he loved would be
enshrined for the reverent worship of posterity, flitted through his
mind. The historian who had enough elevation of soul to write of Guzman
Bento: "Yet this monster, imbrued in the blood of his countrymen, must
not be held unreservedly to the execration of future years. It appears
to be true that he, too, loved his country. He had given it twelve years
of peace; and, absolute master of lives and fortunes as he was, he
died poor. His worst fault, perhaps, was not his ferocity, but his
ignorance;" the man who could write thus of a cruel persecutor (the
passage occurs in his "History of Misrule") felt at the foreshadowing of
success an almost boundless affection for his two helpers, for these two
young people from over the sea.

Just as years ago, calmly, from the conviction of practical necessity,
stronger than any abstract political doctrine, Henry Gould had drawn
the sword, so now, the times being changed, Charles Gould had flung
the silver of the San Tome into the fray. The Inglez of Sulaco, the
"Costaguana Englishman" of the third generation, was as far from being
a political intriguer as his uncle from a revolutionary swashbuckler.
Springing from the instinctive uprightness of their natures their action
was reasoned. They saw an opportunity and used the weapon to hand.

Charles Gould's position--a commanding position in the background of
that