nent knows, that Pablo Barrios has had his fill of
military glory."

Charles Gould was not present at the anxious and patriotic send-off. It
was not his part to see the soldiers embark. It was neither his part,
nor his inclination, nor his policy. His part, his inclination, and
his policy were united in one endeavour to keep unchecked the flow of
treasure he had started single-handed from the re-opened scar in the
flank of the mountain. As the mine developed he had trained for himself
some native help. There were foremen, artificers and clerks, with Don
Pepe for the gobernador of the mining population. For the rest his
shoulders alone sustained the whole weight of the "Imperium in Imperio,"
the great Gould Concession whose mere shadow had been enough to crush
the life out of his father.

Mrs. Gould had no silver mine to look after. In the general life of the
Gould Concession she was represented by her two lieutenants, the doctor
and the priest, but she fed her woman's love of excitement on events
whose significance was purified to her by the fire of her imaginative
purpose. On that day she had brought the Avellanos, father and daughter,
down to the harbour with her.

Amongst his other activities of that stirring time, Don Jose had become
the chairman of a Patriotic Committee which had armed a great proportion
of troops in the Sulaco command with an improved model of a military
rifle. It had been just discarded for something still more deadly by
one of the great European powers. How much of the market-price for
second-hand weapons was covered by the voluntary contributions of the
principal families, and how much came from those funds Don Jose was
understood to command abroad, remained a secret which he alone could
have disclosed; but the Ricos, as the populace called them, had
contributed under the pressure of their Nestor's eloquence. Some of the
more enthusiastic ladies had been moved to bring offerings of jewels
into the hands of the man who was the life and soul of the party.

There were moments when both his life and his soul seemed overtaxed
by so many years of undiscouraged belief in regeneration. He appeared
almost inanimate, sitting rigidly by the side of Mrs. Gould in the
landau, with his fine, old, clean-shaven face of a uniform tint as if
modelled in yellow wax, shaded by a soft felt hat, the dark eyes looking
out fixedly. Antonia, the beautiful Antonia, as Miss Avellanos was
called in Sulaco, leaned back