in hides,
who was murmuring hastily, "Just so. Just so." And now he was going.
It was impossible to do business in explosives with an Administrador so
well provided and so discouraging. He had suffered agonies in the saddle
and had exposed himself to the atrocities of the bandit Hernandez for
nothing at all. Neither hides nor dynamite--and the very shoulders of
the enterprising Israelite expressed dejection. At the door he bowed low
to the engineer-in-chief. But at the bottom of the stairs in the patio
he stopped short, with his podgy hand over his lips in an attitude of
meditative astonishment.

"What does he want to keep so much dynamite for?" he muttered. "And why
does he talk like this to me?"

The engineer-in-chief, looking in at the door of the empty sala, whence
the political tide had ebbed out to the last insignificant drop, nodded
familiarly to the master of the house, standing motionless like a tall
beacon amongst the deserted shoals of furniture.

"Good-night, I am going. Got my bike downstairs. The railway will know
where to go for dynamite should we get short at any time. We have done
cutting and chopping for a while now. We shall begin soon to blast our
way through."

"Don't come to me," said Charles Gould, with perfect serenity. "I
shan't have an ounce to spare for anybody. Not an ounce. Not for my own
brother, if I had a brother, and he were the engineer-in-chief of the
most promising railway in the world."

"What's that?" asked the engineer-in-chief, with equanimity.
"Unkindness?"

"No," said Charles Gould, stolidly. "Policy."

"Radical, I should think," the engineer-in-chief observed from the
doorway.

"Is that the right name?" Charles Gould said, from the middle of the
room.

"I mean, going to the roots, you know," the engineer explained, with an
air of enjoyment.

"Why, yes," Charles pronounced, slowly. "The Gould Concession has struck
such deep roots in this country, in this province, in that gorge of the
mountains, that nothing but dynamite shall be allowed to dislodge it
from there. It's my choice. It's my last card to play."

The engineer-in-chief whistled low. "A pretty game," he said, with a
shade of discretion. "And have you told Holroyd of that extraordinary
trump card you hold in your hand?"

"Card only when it's played; when it falls at the end of the game. Till
then you may call it a--a--"

"Weapon," suggested the railway man.

"No. You may call it rather an argument,"