d Cayta, which is the door of the sea route to Sulaco. They cannot
send a sufficient force over the mountains. No; not even to cope with
the band of Hernandez. Meantime we shall organize our resistance here.
And for that, this very Hernandez will be useful. He has defeated troops
as a bandit; he will no doubt accomplish the same thing if he is made
a colonel or even a general. You know the country well enough not to
be shocked by what I say, Mrs. Gould. I have heard you assert that this
poor bandit was the living, breathing example of cruelty, injustice,
stupidity, and oppression, that ruin men's souls as well as their
fortunes in this country. Well, there would be some poetical retribution
in that man arising to crush the evils which had driven an honest
ranchero into a life of crime. A fine idea of retribution in that, isn't
there?"

Decoud had dropped easily into English, which he spoke with precision,
very correctly, but with too many z sounds.

"Think also of your hospitals, of your schools, of your ailing mothers
and feeble old men, of all that population which you and your husband
have brought into the rocky gorge of San Tome. Are you not responsible
to your conscience for all these people? Is it not worth while to make
another effort, which is not at all so desperate as it looks, rather
than--"

Decoud finished his thought with an upward toss of the arm, suggesting
annihilation; and Mrs. Gould turned away her head with a look of horror.

"Why don't you say all this to my husband?" she asked, without looking
at Decoud, who stood watching the effect of his words.

"Ah! But Don Carlos is so English," he began. Mrs. Gould interrupted--

"Leave that alone, Don Martin. He's as much a Costaguanero--No! He's
more of a Costaguanero than yourself."

"Sentimentalist, sentimentalist," Decoud almost cooed, in a tone of
gentle and soothing deference. "Sentimentalist, after the amazing manner
of your people. I have been watching El Rey de Sulaco since I came here
on a fool's errand, and perhaps impelled by some treason of fate lurking
behind the unaccountable turns of a man's life. But I don't matter, I am
not a sentimentalist, I cannot endow my personal desires with a shining
robe of silk and jewels. Life is not for me a moral romance derived from
the tradition of a pretty fairy tale. No, Mrs. Gould; I am practical. I
am not afraid of my motives. But, pardon me, I have been rather carried
away. What I wish to say is th