revolutionary war, who had planned revolutions, who had believed in
revolutions. For all the uprightness of his character, he had something
of an adventurer's easy morality which takes count of personal risk in
the ethical appraising of his action. He was prepared, if need be, to
blow up the whole San Tome mountain sky high out of the territory of the
Republic. This resolution expressed the tenacity of his character, the
remorse of that subtle conjugal infidelity through which his wife was
no longer the sole mistress of his thoughts, something of his father's
imaginative weakness, and something, too, of the spirit of a buccaneer
throwing a lighted match into the magazine rather than surrender his
ship.

Down below in the patio the wounded Cargador had breathed his last. The
woman cried out once, and her cry, unexpected and shrill, made all the
wounded sit up. The practicante scrambled to his feet, and, guitar in
hand, gazed steadily in her direction with elevated eyebrows. The two
girls--sitting now one on each side of their wounded relative, with
their knees drawn up and long cigars between their lips--nodded at each
other significantly.

Charles Gould, looking down over the balustrade, saw three men dressed
ceremoniously in black frock-coats with white shirts, and wearing
European round hats, enter the patio from the street. One of them, head
and shoulders taller than the two others, advanced with marked gravity,
leading the way. This was Don Juste Lopez, accompanied by two of his
friends, members of Assembly, coming to call upon the Administrador of
the San Tome mine at this early hour. They saw him, too, waved their
hands to him urgently, walking up the stairs as if in procession.

Don Juste, astonishingly changed by having shaved off altogether his
damaged beard, had lost with it nine-tenths of his outward dignity. Even
at that time of serious pre-occupation Charles Gould could not help
noting the revealed ineptitude in the aspect of the man. His companions
looked crestfallen and sleepy. One kept on passing the tip of his tongue
over his parched lips; the other's eyes strayed dully over the tiled
floor of the corredor, while Don Juste, standing a little in advance,
harangued the Senor Administrador of the San Tome mine. It was his firm
opinion that forms had to be observed. A new governor is always visited
by deputations from the Cabildo, which is the Municipal Council,
from the Consulado, the commercial Board,