anched Mrs. Gould's cheek. Basilio,
who had been waiting at table, shrinking within himself, clung to the
sideboard with chattering teeth. It was impossible to hear yourself
speak.

"Shut these windows!" Charles Gould yelled at him, angrily. All the
other servants, terrified at what they took for the signal of a general
massacre, had rushed upstairs, tumbling over each other, men and women,
the obscure and generally invisible population of the ground floor on
the four sides of the patio. The women, screaming "Misericordia!" ran
right into the room, and, falling on their knees against the walls,
began to cross themselves convulsively. The staring heads of men blocked
the doorway in an instant--mozos from the stable, gardeners, nondescript
helpers living on the crumbs of the munificent house--and Charles
Gould beheld all the extent of his domestic establishment, even to the
gatekeeper. This was a half-paralyzed old man, whose long white locks
fell down to his shoulders: an heirloom taken up by Charles Gould's
familial piety. He could remember Henry Gould, an Englishman and a
Costaguanero of the second generation, chief of the Sulaco province;
he had been his personal mozo years and years ago in peace and war; had
been allowed to attend his master in prison; had, on the fatal morning,
followed the firing squad; and, peeping from behind one of the cypresses
growing along the wall of the Franciscan Convent, had seen, with his
eyes starting out of his head, Don Enrique throw up his hands and fall
with his face in the dust. Charles Gould noted particularly the big
patriarchal head of that witness in the rear of the other servants. But
he was surprised to see a shrivelled old hag or two, of whose existence
within the walls of his house he had not been aware. They must have been
the mothers, or even the grandmothers of some of his people. There were
a few children, too, more or less naked, crying and clinging to the legs
of their elders. He had never before noticed any sign of a child in his
patio. Even Leonarda, the camerista, came in a fright, pushing through,
with her spoiled, pouting face of a favourite maid, leading the Viola
girls by the hand. The crockery rattled on table and sideboard, and the
whole house seemed to sway in the deafening wave of sound.

CHAPTER FIVE

During the night the expectant populace had taken possession of all the
belfries in the town in order to welcome Pedrito Montero, who was
making his e