seless. But for a military head they have
the pious Hernandez. And they may raise the country with the new cry of
the wealth for the people."

"Will there be never any peace? Will there be no rest?" Mrs. Gould
whispered. "I thought that we----"

"No!" interrupted the doctor. "There is no peace and no rest in the
development of material interests. They have their law, and their
justice. But it is founded on expediency, and is inhuman; it is without
rectitude, without the continuity and the force that can be found only
in a moral principle. Mrs. Gould, the time approaches when all that the
Gould Concession stands for shall weigh as heavily upon the people as
the barbarism, cruelty, and misrule of a few years back."

"How can you say that, Dr. Monygham?" she cried out, as if hurt in the
most sensitive place of her soul.

"I can say what is true," the doctor insisted, obstinately. "It'll weigh
as heavily, and provoke resentment, bloodshed, and vengeance, because
the men have grown different. Do you think that now the mine would march
upon the town to save their Senor Administrador? Do you think that?"

She pressed the backs of her entwined hands on her eyes and murmured
hopelessly--

"Is it this we have worked for, then?"

The doctor lowered his head. He could follow her silent thought. Was it
for this that her life had been robbed of all the intimate felicities of
daily affection which her tenderness needed as the human body needs air
to breathe? And the doctor, indignant with Charles Gould's blindness,
hastened to change the conversation.

"It is about Nostromo that I wanted to talk to you. Ah! that fellow has
some continuity and force. Nothing will put an end to him. But never
mind that. There's something inexplicable going on--or perhaps only too
easy to explain. You know, Linda is practically the lighthouse keeper of
the Great Isabel light. The Garibaldino is too old now. His part is to
clean the lamps and to cook in the house; but he can't get up the stairs
any longer. The black-eyed Linda sleeps all day and watches the light
all night. Not all day, though. She is up towards five in the afternoon,
when our Nostromo, whenever he is in harbour with his schooner, comes
out on his courting visit, pulling in a small boat."

"Aren't they married yet?" Mrs. Gould asked. "The mother wished it, as
far as I can understand, while Linda was yet quite a child. When I had
the girls with me for a year or so during the War