elpless, a little huddled up, each keeping apart from the
others, as if in the exercise of a public duty they had been overcome
by a desire to shun the notice of every eye. These were the deputations
waiting for their audience. The one from the Provincial Assembly, more
restless and uneasy in its corporate expression, was overtopped by the
big face of Don Juste Lopez, soft and white, with prominent eyelids and
wreathed in impenetrable solemnity as if in a dense cloud. The President
of the Provincial Assembly, coming bravely to save the last shred of
parliamentary institutions (on the English model), averted his eyes
from the Administrador of the San Tome mine as a dignified rebuke of his
little faith in that only saving principle.

The mournful severity of that reproof did not affect Charles Gould, but
he was sensible to the glances of the others directed upon him without
reproach, as if only to read their own fate upon his face. All of them
had talked, shouted, and declaimed in the great sala of the Casa Gould.
The feeling of compassion for those men, struck with a strange impotence
in the toils of moral degradation, did not induce him to make a sign. He
suffered from his fellowship in evil with them too much. He crossed the
Plaza unmolested. The Amarilla Club was full of festive ragamuffins.
Their frowsy heads protruded from every window, and from within came
drunken shouts, the thumping of feet, and the twanging of harps. Broken
bottles strewed the pavement below. Charles Gould found the doctor still
in his house.

Dr. Monygham came away from the crack in the shutter through which he
had been watching the street.

"Ah! You are back at last!" he said in a tone of relief. "I have been
telling Mrs. Gould that you were perfectly safe, but I was not by any
means certain that the fellow would have let you go."

"Neither was I," confessed Charles Gould, laying his hat on the table.

"You will have to take action."

The silence of Charles Gould seemed to admit that this was the only
course. This was as far as Charles Gould was accustomed to go towards
expressing his intentions.

"I hope you did not warn Montero of what you mean to do," the doctor
said, anxiously.

"I tried to make him see that the existence of the mine was bound up
with my personal safety," continued Charles Gould, looking away from the
doctor, and fixing his eyes upon the water-colour sketch upon the wall.

"He believed you?" the doctor asked, eag