ine young fellow like me. Moreover, I was half Scotch. Had I
forgotten the wrongs of my own country? Had I forgotten the '45?

"You'll have heard tell of a Scotch Chief Justice whose son spent
in Amsterdam the money his father earned on the justice seat in
Edinb'ro'--money paid for rum and run silks . . ."

Of course I had heard of it; everybody had; but it had been some years
before.

"We're backwards hereabouts," O'Brien jeered. "But over there they
winked and chuckled at the judge, and they do the same in Havana at us."

Suddenly from behind us the voice of the young girl said, "Of what do
you discourse, my English cousin?"

O'Brien interposed deferentially. "Senorita, I ask him to come to Rio,"
he said.

She turned her large dark eyes scrutinizingly upon me, then dropped them
again. She was arranging some melon seeds in a rayed circle round the
lizard that looked motionlessly at her.

"Do not speak very loudly, lest you awaken my father," she warned us.

The old Don's face was still turned to the ceiling. Carlos, standing
behind his chair, opened his mouth a little in a half smile. I was
really angry with O'Brien by that time, with his air of omniscience,
superiority, and self-content, as if he were talking to a child or
someone very credulous and weak-minded.

"What right have you to speak for me, Senor Juez?" I said in the best
Spanish I could.

The young girl looked at me once more, and then again looked down.

"Oh, I can speak for you," he answered in English, "because I know. Your
position's this." He sat down in his rocking chair, crossed his legs,
and looked at me as if he expected me to show signs of astonishment at
his knowing so much. "You're in a hole. You must leave this island of
Jamaica--surely it's as distressful as my own dear land--and you can't
go home, because the runners would be after you. You're 'wanted' here as
well as there, and you've nowhere to go."

I looked at him, quite startled by this view of my case. He extended one
plump hand towards me, and still further lowered his voice.

"Now, I offer you a good berth, a snug berth. And 'tis a pretty spot."
He got a sort of languorous honey into his voice, and drawled out,
"The--the Senorita's." He took an air of businesslike candour. "You can
help us, and we you; we could do without you better than you without us.
Our undertaking--there's big names in it, just as in the Free Trading
you know so well, don't be saying you don't--is