end of the street the glowing coals in the brazeros of the market
women cooking their evening meal gleamed red along the edge of the
pavement. A man appeared without a sound in the light of a street lamp,
showing the coloured inverted triangle of his bordered poncho, square on
his shoulders, hanging to a point below his knees. From the harbour
end of the Calle a horseman walked his soft-stepping mount, gleaming
silver-grey abreast each lamp under the dark shape of the rider.

"Behold the illustrious Capataz de Cargadores," said Decoud, gently,
"coming in all his splendour after his work is done. The next great man
of Sulaco after Don Carlos Gould. But he is good-natured, and let me
make friends with him."

"Ah, indeed!" said Antonia. "How did you make friends?"

"A journalist ought to have his finger on the popular pulse, and this
man is one of the leaders of the populace. A journalist ought to know
remarkable men--and this man is remarkable in his way."

"Ah, yes!" said Antonia, thoughtfully. "It is known that this Italian
has a great influence."

The horseman had passed below them, with a gleam of dim light on the
shining broad quarters of the grey mare, on a bright heavy stirrup, on a
long silver spur; but the short flick of yellowish flame in the dusk was
powerless against the muffled-up mysteriousness of the dark figure with
an invisible face concealed by a great sombrero.

Decoud and Antonia remained leaning over the balcony, side by side,
touching elbows, with their heads overhanging the darkness of the
street, and the brilliantly lighted sala at their backs. This was a
tete-a-tete of extreme impropriety; something of which in the whole
extent of the Republic only the extraordinary Antonia could be
capable--the poor, motherless girl, never accompanied, with a careless
father, who had thought only of making her learned. Even Decoud himself
seemed to feel that this was as much as he could expect of having her to
himself till--till the revolution was over and he could carry her off
to Europe, away from the endlessness of civil strife, whose folly seemed
even harder to bear than its ignominy. After one Montero there would
be another, the lawlessness of a populace of all colours and races,
barbarism, irremediable tyranny. As the great Liberator Bolivar had said
in the bitterness of his spirit, "America is ungovernable. Those who
worked for her independence have ploughed the sea." He did not care, he
declared bol