ed appreciatively.

"I know they sound a queer lot," he assented, "but when you get to know
'em, you like 'em. My own trouble," he added, "was a horse. I never
could see why they made such a fuss about him. He was lame when I took
him."

Disregarding Garland's pleasantry, for some time His Excellency sat
with his hands clasped behind his head, frowning up from the open patio
into the hot, cloudless sky. On the ridge of his tiled roof a foul
buzzard blinked at him from red-rimmed eyes, across the yellow wall a
lizard ran for shelter, at his elbow a macaw compassing the circle of
its tin prison muttered dreadful oaths. Outside, as the washerwomen
beat their linen clubs upon the flat rocks of the river, the hot, stale
air was spanked with sharp reports. In Camaguay theirs was the only
industry, the only sign of cleanliness; and recognizing that another
shirt had been thrashed into subjection and rags, Everett winced. No
less visibly did his own thoughts cause him to wince. Garland he had
forgotten, and he was sunk deep in self-pity. His thoughts were of
London, with its world politics, its splendid traditions, its great and
gracious ladies; of Paris in the spring sunshine, when he cantered
through the Bois; of Madrid, with its pomp and royalty, and the gray
walls of its galleries proclaiming Murillo and Velasquez. These things
he had forsaken because he believed he was ambitious; and behold into
what a cul-de-sac his ambition had led him! A comic-opera country that
was not comic, but dead and buried from the world; a savage people,
unread, unenlightened, unclean; and for society of his countrymen,
pitiful derelicts in hiding from the law. In his soul he rebelled. In
words he exploded bitterly.

"This is one hell of a hole, Garland," cried the diplomat. His jaws
and his eyes hardened. "I'm going back to Europe. And the only way I
can go is to get that treaty. I was sent here to get it. Those were
my orders. And I'll get it if I have to bribe them out of my own
pocket; if I have to outbid Mr. Ward, and send him and your good
Colonel Goddard and all the rest of the crew to the jails where they
belong!"

Garland heard him without emotion. From long residence near the
equator he diagnosed the outbreak as a case of tropic choler,
aggravated by nostalgia and fleas.

"I'll bet you don't," he said.

"I'll bet you your passage-money home," shouted Everett, "against my
passage-money to Europe."

"Done!" said