ng itself hopelessly. Now the parties must be left to
themselves."

"Costaguana for the Costaguaneros," interjected the doctor,
sardonically. "It is a fine country, and they have raised a fine crop of
hates, vengeance, murder, and rapine--those sons of the country."

"Well, I am one of them," Charles Gould's voice sounded, calmly, "and
I must be going on to see to my own crop of trouble. My wife has driven
straight on, doctor?"

"Yes. All was quiet on this side. Mrs. Gould has taken the two girls
with her."

Charles Gould rode on, and the engineer-in-chief followed the doctor
indoors.

"That man is calmness personified," he said, appreciatively, dropping on
a bench, and stretching his well-shaped legs in cycling stockings nearly
across the doorway. "He must be extremely sure of himself."

"If that's all he is sure of, then he is sure of nothing," said the
doctor. He had perched himself again on the end of the table. He nursed
his cheek in the palm of one hand, while the other sustained the
elbow. "It is the last thing a man ought to be sure of." The candle,
half-consumed and burning dimly with a long wick, lighted up from below
his inclined face, whose expression affected by the drawn-in cicatrices
in the cheeks, had something vaguely unnatural, an exaggerated
remorseful bitterness. As he sat there he had the air of meditating upon
sinister things. The engineer-in-chief gazed at him for a time before he
protested.

"I really don't see that. For me there seems to be nothing else.
However----"

He was a wise man, but he could not quite conceal his contempt for that
sort of paradox; in fact. Dr. Monygham was not liked by the Europeans
of Sulaco. His outward aspect of an outcast, which he preserved even in
Mrs. Gould's drawing-room, provoked unfavourable criticism. There could
be no doubt of his intelligence; and as he had lived for over twenty
years in the country, the pessimism of his outlook could not be
altogether ignored. But instinctively, in self-defence of their
activities and hopes, his hearers put it to the account of some hidden
imperfection in the man's character. It was known that many years
before, when quite young, he had been made by Guzman Bento chief medical
officer of the army. Not one of the Europeans then in the service
of Costaguana had been so much liked and trusted by the fierce old
Dictator.

Afterwards his story was not so clear. It lost itself amongst the
innumerable tales of conspira