IV

The work which had called Clay to the mines kept him there for some

time, and it was not until the third day after the arrival of the

Langhams that he returned again to the Palms. On the afternoon when he

climbed the hill to the bungalow he found the Langhams as he had left

them, with the difference that King now occupied a place in the family

circle. Clay was made so welcome, and especially so by King, that he

felt rather ashamed of his sentiments toward him, and considered his

three days of absence to be well repaid by the heartiness of their

greeting.

"For myself," said Mr. Langham, "I don't believe you had anything to do

at the mines at all. I think you went away just to show us how

necessary you are. But if you want me to make a good report of our

resident director on my return, you had better devote yourself less to

the mines while you are here and more to us." Clay said he was glad to

find that his duties were to be of so pleasant a nature, and asked them

what they had seen and what they had done.

They told him they had been nowhere, but had waited for his return in

order that he might act as their guide.

"Then you should see the city at once," said Clay, "and I will have the

volante brought to the door, and we can all go in this afternoon.

There is room for the four of you inside, and I can sit on the box-seat

with the driver."

"No," said King, "let Hope or me sit on the box-seat. Then we can

practise our Spanish on the driver."

"Not very well," Clay replied, "for the driver sits on the first horse,

like a postilion. It's a sort of tandem without reins. Haven't you

seen it yet? We consider the volante our proudest exhibit." So Clay

ordered the volante to be brought out, and placed them facing each

other in the open carriage, while he climbed to the box-seat, from

which position of vantage he pointed out and explained the objects of

interest they passed, after the manner of a professional guide. It was

a warm, beautiful afternoon, and the clear mists of the atmosphere

intensified the rich blue of the sky, and the brilliant colors of the

houses, and the different shades of green of the trees and bushes that

lined the highroad to the capital.

"To the right, as we descend," said Clay, speaking over his shoulder,

"you see a tin house. It is the home of the resident director of the

Olancho Mining Company (Limited), and of his able lieutenants, Mr.

Theodore Langham and Mr. MacWilliams. The building on the extreme left

is the round-house, in which Mr. MacWilliams stores his three

locomotive engines, and in the far middle-distance is Mr. MacWilliams

himself in the act of repairing a water-tank. He is the one in a suit

of blue overalls, and as his language at such times is free, we will

drive rapidly on and not embarrass him. Besides," added the engineer,

with the happy laugh of a boy who had been treated to a holiday, "I am

sure that I am not setting him the example of fixity to duty which he

should expect from his chief."

They passed between high hedges of Spanish bayonet, and came to mud

cabins thatched with palm-leaves, and alive with naked, little

brown-bodied children, who laughed and cheered to them as they passed.

"It's a very beautiful country for the pueblo," was Clay's comment.

"Different parts of the same tree furnish them with food, shelter, and

clothing, and the sun gives them fuel, and the Government changes so

often that they can always dodge the tax-collector."

From the mud cabins they came to more substantial one-story houses of

adobe, with the walls painted in two distinct colors, blue, pink, or

yellow, with red-tiled roofs, and the names with which they had been

christened in bold black letters above the entrances. Then the

carriage rattled over paved streets, and they drove between houses of

two stories painted more decorously in pink and light blue, with

wide-open windows, guarded by heavy bars of finely wrought iron and

ornamented with scrollwork in stucco. The principal streets were given

up to stores and cafés, all wide open to the pavement and protected

from the sun by brilliantly striped awnings, and gay with the national

colors of Olancho in flags and streamers. In front of them sat

officers in uniform, and the dark-skinned dandies of Valencia, in white

duck suits and Panama hats, toying with tortoise shell canes, which

could be converted, if the occasion demanded, into blades of Toledo

steel. In the streets were priests and bare-legged mule drivers, and

ragged ranchmen with red-caped cloaks hanging to their sandals, and

negro women, with bare shoulders and long trains, vending lottery

tickets and rolling huge cigars between their lips. It was an old

story to Clay and King, but none of the others had seen a

Spanish-American city before; they were familiar with the Far East and

the Mediterranean, but not with the fierce, hot tropics of their sister

continent, and so their eyes were wide open, and they kept calling

continually to one another to notice some new place or figure.

They in their turn did not escape from notice or comment. The two

sisters would have been conspicuous anywhere--in a queen's drawing-room

or on an Indian reservation. Theirs was a type that the caballeros and

senoritas did not know. With them dark hair was always associated with

dark complexions, the rich duskiness of which was always vulgarized by

a coat of powder, and this fair blending of pink and white skin under

masses of black hair was strangely new, so that each of the few women

who were to be met on the street turned to look after the carriage,

while the American women admired their mantillas, and felt that the

straw sailor-hats they wore had become heavy and unfeminine.

Clay was very happy in picking out what was most characteristic and

picturesque, and every street into which he directed the driver to take

them seemed to possess some building or monument that was of peculiar

interest. They did not know that he had mapped out this ride many

times before, and was taking them over a route which he had already

travelled with them in imagination. King knew what the capital would be

like before he entered it, from his experience of other South American

cities, but he acted as though it were all new to him, and allowed Clay

to explain, and to give the reason for those features of the place that

were unusual and characteristic. Clay noticed this and appealed to him

from time to time, when he was in doubt; but the other only smiled back

and shook his head, as much as to say, "This is your city; they would

rather hear about it from you."

Clay took them to the principal shops, where the two girls held

whispered consultations over lace mantillas, which they had at once

determined to adopt, and bought the gorgeous paper fans, covered with

brilliant pictures of bull-fighters in suits of silver tinsel; and from

these open stores he led them to a dingy little shop, where there was

old silver and precious hand-painted fans of mother-of-pearl that had

been pawned by families who had risked and lost all in some revolution;

and then to another shop, where two old maiden ladies made a

particularly good guava; and to tobacconists, where the men bought a

few of the native cigars, which, as they were a monopoly of the

Government, were as bad as Government monopolies always are.

Clay felt a sudden fondness for the city, so grateful was he to it for

entertaining her as it did, and for putting its best front forward for

her delectation. He wanted to thank some one for building the quaint

old convent, with its yellow walls washed to an orange tint, and black

in spots with dampness; and for the fountain covered with green moss

that stood before its gate, and around which were gathered the girls

and women of the neighborhood with red water-jars on their shoulders,

and little donkeys buried under stacks of yellow sugar-cane, and the

negro drivers of the city's green water-carts, and the blue wagons that

carried the manufactured ice. Toward five o'clock they decided to

spend the rest of the day in the city, and to telephone for the two

boys to join them at La Venus, the great restaurant on the plaza, where

Clay had invited them to dine.

He suggested that they should fill out the time meanwhile by a call on

the President, and after a search for cards in various pocketbooks,

they drove to the Government palace, which stood in an open square in

the heart of the city.

As they arrived the President and his wife were leaving for their

afternoon drive on the Alameda, the fashionable parade-ground of the

city, and the state carriage and a squad of cavalry appeared from the

side of the palace as the visitors drove up to the entrance. But at

the sight of Clay, General Alvarez and his wife retreated to the house

again and made them welcome. The President led the men into his

reception-room and entertained them with champagne and cigarettes, not

manufactured by his Government; and his wife, after first conducting

the girls through the state drawing-room, where the late sunlight shone

gloomily on strange old portraits of assassinated presidents and

victorious generals, and garish yellow silk furniture, brought them to

her own apartments, and gave them tea after a civilized fashion, and

showed them how glad she was to see some one of her own world again.

During their short visit Madame Alvarez talked a greater part of the

time herself, addressing what she said to Miss Langham, but looking at

Hope. It was unusual for Hope to be singled out in this way when her

sister was present, and both the sisters noticed it and spoke of it

afterwards. They thought Madame Alvarez very beautiful and

distinguished-looking, and she impressed them, even after that short

knowledge of her, as a woman of great force of character.

"She was very well dressed for a Spanish woman," was Miss Langham's

comment, later in the afternoon. "But everything she had on was just a

year behind the fashions, or twelve steamer days behind, as Mr.

MacWilliams puts it."

"She reminded me," said Hope, "of a black panther I saw once in a

circus."

"Dear me!" exclaimed the sister, "I don't see that at all. Why?"

Hope said she did not know why; she was not given to analyzing her

impressions or offering reasons for them. "Because the panther looked

so unhappy," she explained, doubtfully, "and restless; and he kept

pacing up and down all the time, and hitting his head against the bars

as he walked as though he liked the pain. Madame Alvarez seemed to me

to be just like that--as though she were shut up somewhere and wanted

to be free."

When Madame Alvarez and the two sisters had joined the men, they all

walked together to the terrace, and the visitors waited until the

President and his wife should take their departure. Hope noticed, in

advance of the escort of native cavalry, an auburn-haired, fair-skinned

young man who was sitting an English saddle.

The officer's eyes were blue and frank and attractive-looking, even as

they then were fixed ahead of him with a military lack of expression;

but he came to life very suddenly when the President called to him, and

prodded his horse up to the steps and dismounted. He was introduced by

Alvarez as "Captain Stuart of my household troops, late of the Gordon

Highlanders. Captain Stuart," said the President, laying his hand

affectionately on the younger man's epaulette, "takes care of my life

and the safety of my home and family. He could have the command of the

army if he wished; but no, he is fond of us, and he tells me we are in

more need of protection from our friends at home than from our enemies

on the frontier. Perhaps he knows best. I trust him, Mr. Langham,"

added the President, solemnly, "as I trust no other man in all this

country."

"I am very glad to meet Captain Stuart, I am sure," said Mr. Langham,

smiling, and appreciating how the shyness of the Englishman must be

suffering under the praises of the Spaniard. And Stuart was indeed so

embarrassed that he flushed under his tan, and assured Clay, while

shaking hands with them all, that he was delighted to make his

acquaintance; at which the others laughed, and Stuart came to himself

sufficiently to laugh with them, and to accept Clay's invitation to

dine with them later.

They found the two boys waiting in the café of the restaurant where

they had arranged to meet, and they ascended the steps together to the

table on the balcony that Clay had reserved for them.

The young engineer appeared at his best as host. The responsibility of

seeing that a half-dozen others were amused and content sat well upon

him; and as course followed course, and the wines changed, and the

candles left the rest of the room in darkness and showed only the table

and the faces around it, they all became rapidly more merry and the

conversation intimately familiar.

Clay knew the kind of table-talk to which the Langhams were accustomed,

and used the material around his table in such a way that the talk

there was vastly different. From King he drew forth tales of the

buried cities he had first explored, and then robbed of their ugliest

idols. He urged MacWilliams to tell carefully edited stories of life

along the Chagres before the Scandal came, and of the fastnesses of the

Andes; and even Stuart grew braver and remembered "something of the

same sort" he had seen at Fort Nilt, in Upper Burma.

"Of course," was Clay's comment at the conclusion of one of these

narratives, "being an Englishman, Stuart left out the point of the

story, which was that he blew in the gates of the fort with a charge of

dynamite. He got a D. S. O. for doing it."

"Being an Englishman," said Hope, smiling encouragingly on the

conscious Stuart, "he naturally would leave that out."

Mr. Langham and his daughters formed an eager audience. They had never

before met at one table three men who had known such experiences, and

who spoke of them as though they must be as familiar in the lives of

the others as in their own--men who spoiled in the telling stories that

would have furnished incidents for melodramas, and who impressed their

hearers more with what they left unsaid, and what was only suggested,

than what in their view was the most important point.

The dinner came to an end at last, and Mr. Langham proposed that they

should go down and walk with the people in the plaza; but his two

daughters preferred to remain as spectators on the balcony, and Clay

and Stuart stayed with them.

"At last!" sighed Clay, under his breath, seating himself at Miss

Langham's side as she sat leaning forward with her arms upon the

railing and looking down into the plaza below. She made no sign at

first that she had heard him, but as the voices of Stuart and Hope rose

from the other end of the balcony she turned her head and asked, "Why

at last?"

"Oh, you couldn't understand," laughed Clay. "You have not been

looking forward to just one thing and then had it come true. It is the

only thing that ever did come true to me, and I thought it never would."

"You don't try to make me understand," said the girl, smiling, but

without turning her eyes from the moving spectacle below her. Clay

considered her challenge silently. He did not know just how much it

might mean from her, and the smile robbed it of all serious intent; so

he, too, turned and looked down into the great square below them,

content, now that she was alone with him, to take his time.

At one end of the plaza the President's band was playing native waltzes

that came throbbing through the trees and beating softly above the

rustling skirts and clinking spurs of the senoritas and officers,

sweeping by in two opposite circles around the edges of the tessellated

pavements. Above the palms around the square arose the dim, white

facade of the cathedral, with the bronze statue of Anduella, the

liberator of Olancho, who answered with his upraised arm and cocked hat

the cheers of an imaginary populace. Clay's had been an unobtrusive

part in the evening's entertainment, but he saw that the others had

been pleased, and felt a certain satisfaction in thinking that King

himself could not have planned and carried out a dinner more admirable

in every way. He was gratified that they should know him to be not

altogether a barbarian. But what he best liked to remember was that

whenever he had spoken she had listened, even when her eyes were turned

away and she was pretending to listen to some one else. He tormented

himself by wondering whether this was because he interested her only as

a new and strange character, or whether she felt in some way how

eagerly he was seeking her approbation. For the first time in his life

he found himself considering what he was about to say, and he suited it

for her possible liking. It was at least some satisfaction that she

had, if only for the time being, singled him out as of especial

interest, and he assured himself that the fault would be his if her

interest failed. He no longer looked on himself as an outsider.

Stuart's voice arose from the farther end of the balcony, where the

white figure of Hope showed dimly in the darkness.

"They are talking about you over there," said Miss Langham, turning

toward him.

"Well, I don't mind," answered Clay, "as long as they talk about

me--over there."

Miss Langham shook her head. "You are very frank and audacious," she

replied, doubtfully, "but it is rather pleasant as a change."

"I don't call that audacious, to say I don't want to be interrupted

when I am talking to you. Aren't the men you meet generally

audacious?" he asked. "I can see why not--though," he continued, "you

awe them."

"I can't think that's a nice way to affect people," protested Miss

Langham, after a pause. "I don't awe you, do I?"

"Oh, you affect me in many different ways," returned Clay, cheerfully.

"Sometimes I am very much afraid of you, and then again my feelings are

only those of unlimited admiration."

"There, again, what did I tell you?" said Miss Langham.

"Well, I can't help doing that," said Clay. "That is one of the few

privileges that is left to a man in my position--it doesn't matter what

I say. That is the advantage of being of no account and hopelessly

detrimental. The eligible men of the world, you see, have to be so

very careful. A Prime Minister, for instance, can't talk as he wishes,

and call names if he wants to, or write letters, even. Whatever he

says is so important, because he says it, that he must be very

discreet. I am so unimportant that no one minds what I say, and so I

say it. It's the only comfort I have."

"Are you in the habit of going around the world saying whatever you

choose to every woman you happen to--to--" Miss Langham hesitated.

"To admire very much," suggested Clay.

"To meet," corrected Miss Langham. "Because, if you are, it is a very

dangerous and selfish practice, and I think your theory of

non-responsibility is a very wicked one."

"Well, I wouldn't say it to a child," mused Clay, "but to one who must

have heard it before--"

"And who, you think, would like to hear it again, perhaps," interrupted

Miss Langham.

"No, not at all," said Clay. "I don't say it to give her pleasure, but

because it gives me pleasure to say what I think."

"If we are to continue good friends, Mr. Clay," said Miss Langham, in

decisive tones, "we must keep our relationship on more of a social and

less of a personal basis. It was all very well that first night I met

you," she went on, in a kindly tone.

"You rushed in then and by a sort of tour de force made me think a

great deal about myself and also about you. Your stories of cherished

photographs and distant devotion and all that were very interesting;

but now we are to be together a great deal, and if we are to talk about

ourselves all the time, I for one shall grow very tired of it. As a

matter of fact you don't know what your feelings are concerning me, and

until you do we will talk less about them and more about the things you

are certain of. When are you going to take us to the mines, for

instance, and who was Anduella, the Liberator of Olancho, on that

pedestal over there? Now, isn't that much more instructive?"

Clay smiled grimly and made no answer, but sat with knitted brows

looking out across the trees of the plaza. His face was so serious and

he was apparently giving such earnest consideration to what she had

said that Miss Langham felt an uneasy sense of remorse. And, moreover,

the young man's profile, as he sat looking away from her, was very

fine, and the head on his broad shoulders was as well-modelled as the

head of an Athenian statue.

Miss Langham was not insensible to beauty of any sort, and she regarded

the profile with perplexity and with a softening spirit.

"You understand," she said, gently, being quite certain that she did

not understand this new order of young man herself. "You are not

offended with me?" she asked.

Clay turned and frowned, and then smiled in a puzzled way and stretched

out his hand toward the equestrian statue in the plaza.

"Andulla or Anduella, the Treaty-Maker, as they call him, was born in

1700," he said; "he was a most picturesque sort of a chap, and freed

this country from the yoke of Spain. One of the stories they tell of

him gives you a good idea of his character." And so, without any

change of expression or reference to what had just passed between them,

Clay continued through the remainder of their stay on the balcony to

discourse in humorous, graphic phrases on the history of Olancho, its

heroes, and its revolutions, the buccaneers and pirates of the old

days, and the concession-hunters and filibusters of the present. It

was some time before Miss Langham was able to give him her full

attention, for she was considering whether he could be so foolish as to

have taken offence at what she said, and whether he would speak of it

again, and in wondering whether a personal basis for conversation was

not, after all, more entertaining than anecdotes of the victories and

heroism of dead and buried Spaniards.

"That Captain Stuart," said Hope to her sister, as they drove home

together through the moonlight, "I like him very much. He seems to

have such a simple idea of what is right and good. It is like a child

talking. Why, I am really much older than he is in everything but

years--why is that?"

"I suppose it's because we always talk before you as though you were a

grown-up person," said her sister. "But I agree with you about Captain

Stuart; only, why is he down here? If he is a gentleman, why is he not

in his own army? Was he forced to leave it?"

"Oh, he seems to have a very good position here," said Mr. Langham.

"In England, at his age, he would be only a second-lieutenant. Don't

you remember what the President said, that he would trust him with the

command of his army? That's certainly a responsible position, and it

shows great confidence in him."

"Not so great, it seems to me," said King, carelessly, "as he is

showing him in making him the guardian of his hearth and home. Did you

hear what he said to-day? 'He guards my home and my family.' I don't

think a man's home and family are among the things he can afford to

leave to the protection of stray English subalterns. From all I hear,

it would be better if President Alvarez did less plotting and protected

his own house himself."

"The young man did not strike me as the sort of person," said Mr.

Langham, warmly, "who would be likely to break his word to the man who

is feeding him and sheltering him, and whose uniform he wears. I don't

think the President's home is in any danger from within. Madame

Alvarez--"

Clay turned suddenly in his place on the box-seat of the carriage,

where he had been sitting, a silent, misty statue in the moonlight, and

peered down on those in the carriage below him.

"Madame Alvarez needs no protection, as you were about to say, Mr.

Langham," he interrupted, quickly. "Those who know her could say

nothing against her, and those who do not know her would not so far

forget themselves as to dare to do it. Have you noticed the effect of

the moonlight on the walls of the convent?" he continued, gently. "It

makes them quite white."

"No," exclaimed Mr. Langham and King, hurriedly, as they both turned

and gazed with absorbing interest at the convent on the hills above

them.

Before the sisters went to sleep that night Hope came to the door of

her sister's room and watched Alice admiringly as she sat before the

mirror brushing out her hair.

"I think it's going to be fine down here; don't you, Alice?" she asked.

"Everything is so different from what it is at home, and so beautiful,

and I like the men we've met. Isn't that Mr. MacWilliams funny--and he

is so tough. And Captain Stuart--it is a pity he's shy. The only

thing he seems to be able to talk about is Mr. Clay. He worships Mr.

Clay!"

"Yes," assented her sister, "I noticed on the balcony that you seemed

to have found some way to make him speak."

"Well, that was it. He likes to talk about Mr. Clay, and I wanted to

listen. Oh! he is a fine man. He has done more exciting things--"

"Who? Captain Stuart?"

"No--Mr. Clay. He's been in three real wars and about a dozen little

ones, and he's built thousands of miles of railroads, I don't know how

many thousands, but Captain Stuart knows; and he built the highest

bridge in Peru. It swings in the air across a chasm, and it rocks when

the wind blows. And the German Emperor made him a Baron."

"Why?"

"I don't know. I couldn't understand. It was something about plans

for fortifications. He, Mr. Clay, put up a fort in the harbor of Rio

Janeiro during a revolution, and the officers on a German man-of-war

saw it and copied the plans, and the Germans built one just like it,

only larger, on the Baltic, and when the Emperor found out whose design

it was, he sent Mr. Clay the order of something-or-other, and made him

a Baron."

"Really," exclaimed the elder sister, "isn't he afraid that some one

will marry him for his title?"

"Oh, well, you can laugh, but I think it's pretty fine, and so does

Ted," added Hope, with the air of one who propounds a final argument.

"Oh, I beg your pardon," laughed Alice. "If Ted approves we must all

go down and worship."

"And father, too," continued Hope. "He said he thought Mr. Clay was

one of the most remarkable men for his years that he had ever met."

Miss Langham's eyes were hidden by the masses of her black hair that

she had shaken over her face, and she said nothing.

"And I liked the way he shut Reggie King up too," continued Hope,

stoutly, "when he and father were talking that way about Madame

Alvarez."

"Yes, upon my word," exclaimed her sister, impatiently tossing her hair

back over her shoulders. "I really cannot see that Madame Alvarez is

in need of any champion. I thought Mr. Clay made it very much worse by

rushing in the way he did. Why should he take it upon himself to

correct a man as old as my father?"

"I suppose because Madame Alvarez is a friend of his," Hope answered.

"My dear child, a beautiful woman can always find some man to take her

part," said Miss Langham. "But I've no doubt," she added, rising and

kissing her sister good-night, "that he is all that your Captain Stuart

thinks him; but he is not going to keep us awake any longer, is he,

even if he does show such gallant interest in old ladies?"

"Old ladies!" exclaimed Hope in amazement.

"Why, Alice!"

But her sister only laughed and waved her out of the room, and Hope

walked away frowning in much perplexity.

V

The visit to the city was imitated on the three succeeding evenings by

similar excursions. On one night they returned to the plaza, and the

other two were spent in drifting down the harbor and along the coast on

King's yacht. The President and Madame Alvarez were King's guests on

one of these moonlight excursions, and were saluted by the proper

number of guns, and their native band played on the forward deck. Clay

felt that King held the centre of the stage for the time being, and

obliterated himself completely. He thought of his own paddle-wheel

tug-boat that he had had painted and gilded in her honor, and smiled

grimly.

MacWilliams approached him as he sat leaning back on the rail and

looking up, with the eye of a man who had served before the mast, at

the lacework of spars and rigging above him. MacWilliams came toward

him on tiptoe and dropped carefully into a wicker chair. "There don't

seem to be any door-mats on this boat," he said. "In every other

respect she seems fitted out quite complete; all the latest magazines

and enamelled bathtubs, and Chinese waiter-boys with cock-tails up

their sleeves. But there ought to be a mat at the top of each of those

stairways that hang over the side, otherwise some one is sure to soil

the deck. Have you been down in the engine-room yet?" he asked. "Well,

don't go, then," he advised, solemnly. "It will only make you feel

badly. I have asked the Admiral if I can send those half-breed engine

drivers over to-morrow to show them what a clean engine-room looks

like. I've just been talking to the chief. His name's MacKenzie, and

I told him I was Scotch myself, and he said it 'was a greet pleesure'

to find a gentleman so well acquainted with the movements of machinery.

He thought I was one of King's friends, I guess, so I didn't tell him I

pulled a lever for a living myself. I gave him a cigar though, and he

said, 'Thankee, sir,' and touched his cap to me."

MacWilliams chuckled at the recollection, and crossed his legs

comfortably. "One of King's cigars, too," he said. "Real Havana; he

leaves them lying around loose in the cabin. Have you had one? Ted

Langham and I took about a box between us."

Clay made no answer, and MacWilliams settled himself contentedly in the

great wicker chair and puffed grandly on a huge cigar.

"It's demoralizing, isn't it?" he said at last.

"What?" asked Clay, absently.

"Oh, this associating with white people again, as we're doing now. It

spoils you for tortillas and rice, doesn't it? It's going to be great

fun while it lasts, but when they've all gone, and Ted's gone, too, and

the yacht's vanished, and we fall back to tramping around the plaza

twice a week, it won't be gay, will it? No; it won't be gay. We're

having the spree of our lives now, I guess, but there's going to be a

difference in the morning."

"Oh, it's worth a headache, I think," said Clay, as he shrugged his

shoulders and walked away to find Miss Langham.

The day set for the visit to the mines rose bright and clear.

MacWilliams had rigged out his single passenger-car with rugs and

cushions, and flags flew from its canvas top that flapped and billowed

in the wind of the slow-moving train. Their observation-car, as

MacWilliams termed it, was placed in front of the locomotive, and they

were pushed gently along the narrow rails between forests of Manaca

palms, and through swamps and jungles, and at times over the limestone

formation along the coast, where the waves dashed as high as the

smokestack of the locomotive, covering the excursionists with a

sprinkling of white spray. Thousands of land-crabs, painted red and

black and yellow, scrambled with a rattle like dead men's bones across

the rails to be crushed by the hundreds under the wheels of the

Juggernaut; great lizards ran from sunny rocks at the sound of their

approach, and a deer bounded across the tracks fifty feet in front of

the cow-catcher. MacWilliams escorted Hope out into the cab of the

locomotive, and taught her how to increase and slacken the speed of the

engine, until she showed an unruly desire to throw the lever open

altogether and shoot them off the rails into the ocean beyond.

Clay sat at the back of the car with Miss Langham, and told her and her

father of the difficulties with which young MacWilliams had had to

contend. Miss Langham found her chief pleasure in noting the attention

which her father gave to all that Clay had to tell him. Knowing her

father as she did, and being familiar with his manner toward other men,

she knew that he was treating Clay with unusual consideration. And

this pleased her greatly, for it justified her own interest in him.

She regarded Clay as a discovery of her own, but she was glad to have

her opinion of him shared by others.

Their coming was a great event in the history of the mines. Kirkland,

the foreman, and Chapman, who handled the dynamite, Weimer, the Consul,

and the native doctor, who cared for the fever-stricken and the

casualties, were all at the station to meet them in the whitest of

white duck and with a bunch of ponies to carry them on their tour of

inspection, and the village of mud-cabins and zinc-huts that stood

clear of the bare sunbaked earth on whitewashed wooden piles was as

clean as Clay's hundred policemen could sweep it. Mr. Langham rode in

advance of the cavalcade, and the head of each of the different

departments took his turn in riding at his side, and explained what had

been done, and showed him the proud result. The village was empty,

except for the families of the native workmen and the ownerless dogs,

the scavengers of the colony, that snarled and barked and ran leaping

in front of the ponies' heads.

Rising abruptly above the zinc village, lay the first of the five great

hills, with its open front cut into great terraces, on which the men

clung like flies on the side of a wall, some of them in groups around

an opening, or in couples pounding a steel bar that a fellow-workman

turned in his bare hands, while others gathered about the panting

steam-drills that shook the solid rock with fierce, short blows, and

hid the men about them in a throbbing curtain of steam. Self-important

little dummy-engines, dragging long trains of ore-cars, rolled and

rocked on the uneven surface of the ground, and swung around corners

with warning screeches of their whistles. They could see, on peaks

outlined against the sky, the signal-men waving their red flags, and

then plunging down the mountain-side out of danger, as the earth

rumbled and shook and vomited out a shower of stones and rubbish into

the calm hot air. It was a spectacle of desperate activity and

puzzling to the uninitiated, for it seemed to be scattered over an

unlimited extent, with no head nor direction, and with each man, or

each group of men, working alone, like rag-pickers on a heap of ashes.

After the first half-hour of curious interest Miss Langham admitted to

herself that she was disappointed. She confessed she had hoped that

Clay would explain the meaning of the mines to her, and act as her

escort over the mountains which he was blowing into pieces.

But it was King, somewhat bored by the ceaseless noise and heat, and

her brother, incoherently enthusiastic, who rode at her side, while

Clay moved on in advance and seemed to have forgotten her existence.

She watched him pointing up at the openings in the mountains and down

at the ore-road, or stooping to pick up a piece of ore from the ground

in cowboy fashion, without leaving his saddle, and pounding it on the

pommel before he passed it to the others. And, again, he would stand

for minutes at a time up to his boot-tops in the sliding waste, with

his bridle rein over his arm and his thumbs in his belt, listening to

what his lieutenants were saying, and glancing quickly from them to Mr.

Langham to see if he were following the technicalities of their speech.

All of the men who had welcomed the appearance of the women on their

arrival with such obvious delight and with so much embarrassment seemed

now as oblivious of their presence as Clay himself.

Miss Langham pushed her horse up into the group beside Hope, who had

kept her pony close at Clay's side from the beginning; but she could

not make out what it was they were saying, and no one seemed to think

it necessary to explain. She caught Clay's eye at last and smiled

brightly at him; but, after staring at her for fully a minute, until

Kirkland had finished speaking, she heard him say, "Yes, that's it

exactly; in open-face workings there is no other way," and so showed

her that he had not been even conscious of her presence. But a few

minutes later she saw him look up at Hope, folding his arms across his

chest tightly and shaking his head. "You see it was the only thing to

do," she heard him say, as though he were defending some course of

action, and as though Hope were one of those who must be convinced.

"If we had cut the opening on the first level, there was the danger of

the whole thing sinking in, so we had to begin to clear away at the top

and work down. That's why I ordered the bucket-trolley. As it turned

out, we saved money by it."

Hope nodded her head slightly. "That's what I told father when Ted

wrote us about it," she said; "but you haven't done it at Mount

Washington."

"Oh, but it's like this, Miss--" Kirkland replied, eagerly. "It's

because Washington is a solider foundation. We can cut openings all

over it and they won't cave, but this hill is most all rubbish; it's

the poorest stuff in the mines."

Hope nodded her head again and crowded her pony on after the moving

group, but her sister and King did not follow. King looked at her and

smiled. "Hope is very enthusiastic," he said. "Where did she pick it

up?"

"Oh, she and father used to go over it in his study last winter after

Ted came down here," Miss Langham answered, with a touch of impatience

in her tone. "Isn't there some place where we can go to get out of

this heat?"

Weimer, the Consul, heard her and led her back to Kirkland's bungalow,

that hung like an eagle's nest from a projecting cliff. From its porch

they could look down the valley over the greater part of the mines, and

beyond to where the Caribbean Sea lay flashing in the heat.

"I saw very few Americans down there, Weimer," said King. "I thought

Clay had imported a lot of them."

"About three hundred altogether, wild Irishmen and negroes," said the

Consul; "but we use the native soldiers chiefly. They can stand the

climate better, and, besides," he added, "they act as a reserve in case

of trouble. They are Mendoza's men, and Clay is trying to win them

away from him."

"I don't understand," said King.

Weimer looked around him and waited until Kirkland's servant had

deposited a tray full of bottles and glasses on a table near them, and

had departed. "The talk is," he said, "that Alvarez means to proclaim

a dictatorship in his own favor before the spring elections. You've

heard of that, haven't you?" King shook his head.

"Oh, tell us about it," said Miss Langham; "I should so like to be in

plots and conspiracies."

"Well, they're rather common down here," continued the Consul, "but

this one ought to interest you especially, Miss Langham, because it is

a woman who is at the head of it. Madame Alvarez, you know, was the

Countess Manueleta Hernandez before her marriage. She belongs to one

of the oldest families in Spain. Alvarez married her in Madrid, when

he was Minister there, and when he returned to run for President, she

came with him. She's a tremendously ambitious woman, and they do say

she wants to convert the republic into a monarchy, and make her husband

King, or, more properly speaking, make herself Queen. Of course that's

absurd, but she is supposed to be plotting to turn Olancho into a sort

of dependency of Spain, as it was long ago, and that's why she is so

unpopular."

"Indeed?" interrupted Miss Langham, "I did not know that she was

unpopular."

"Oh, rather. Why, her party is called the Royalist Party already, and

only a week before you came the Liberals plastered the city with

denunciatory placards against her, calling on the people to drive her

out of the country."

"What cowards--to fight a woman!" exclaimed Miss Langham.

"Well, she began it first, you see," said the Consul.

"Who is the leader of the fight against her?" asked King.

"General Mendoza; he is commander-in-chief and has the greater part of

the army with him, but the other candidate, old General Rojas, is the

popular choice and the best of the three. He is Vice-President now, and

if the people were ever given a fair chance to vote for the man they

want, he would unquestionably be the next President. The mass of the

people are sick of revolutions. They've had enough of them, but they

will have to go through another before long, and if it turns against

Dr. Alvarez, I'm afraid Mr. Langham will have hard work to hold these

mines. You see, Mendoza has already threatened to seize the whole

plant and turn it into a Government monopoly."

"And if the other one, General Rojas, gets into power, will he seize

the mines, too?"

"No, he is honest, strange to relate," laughed Weimer, "but he won't

get in. Alvarez will make himself dictator, or Mendoza will make

himself President. That's why Clay treats the soldiers here so well.

He thinks he may need them against Mendoza. You may be turning your

saluting-gun on the city yet, Commodore," he added, smiling, "or, what

is more likely, you'll need the yacht to take Miss Langham and the rest

of the family out of the country."

King smiled and Miss Langham regarded Weimer with flattering interest.

"I've got a quick firing gun below decks," said King, "that I used in

the Malaysian Peninsula on a junkful of Black Flags, and I think I'll

have it brought up. And there are about thirty of my men on the yacht

who wouldn't ask for their wages in a year if I'd let them go on shore

and mix up in a fight. When do you suppose this--"

A heavy step and the jingle of spurs on the bare floor of the bungalow

startled the conspirators, and they turned and gazed guiltily out at

the mountain-tops above them as Clay came hurrying out upon the porch.

"They told me you were here," he said, speaking to Miss Langham. "I'm

so sorry it tired you. I should have remembered--it is a rough trip

when you're not used to it," he added, remorsefully. "But I'm glad

Weimer was here to take care of you."

"It was just a trifle hot and noisy," said Miss Langham, smiling

sweetly. She put her hand to her forehead with an expression of

patient suffering. "It made my head ache a little, but it was most

interesting." She added, "You are certainly to be congratulated on

your work."

Clay glanced at her doubtfully with a troubled look, and turned away

his eyes to the busy scene below him. He was greatly hurt that she

should have cared so little, and indignant at himself for being so

unjust. Why should he expect a woman to find interest in that hive of

noise and sweating energy? But even as he stood arguing with himself

his eyes fell on a slight figure sitting erect and graceful on her

pony's back, her white habit soiled and stained red with the ore of the

mines, and green where it had crushed against the leaves. She was

coming slowly up the trail with a body-guard of half a dozen men

crowding closely around her, telling her the difficulties of the work,

and explaining their successes, and eager for a share of her quick

sympathy.

Clay's eyes fixed themselves on the picture, and he smiled at its

significance. Miss Langham noticed the look, and glanced below to see

what it was that had so interested him, and then back at him again. He

was still watching the approaching cavalcade intently, and smiling to

himself. Miss Langham drew in her breath and raised her head and

shoulders quickly, like a deer that hears a footstep in the forest, and

when Hope presently stepped out upon the porch, she turned quickly

toward her, and regarded her steadily, as though she were a stranger to

her, and as though she were trying to see her with the eyes of one who

looked at her for the first time.

"Hope!" she said, "do look at your dress!"

Hope's face was glowing with the unusual exercise, and her eyes were

brilliant. Her hair had slipped down beneath the visor of her helmet.

"I am so tired--and so hungry." She was laughing and looking directly

at Clay. "It has been a wonderful thing to have seen," she said,

tugging at her heavy gauntlet, "and to have done," she added. She

pulled off her glove and held out her hand to Clay, moist and scarred

with the pressure of the reins.

"Thank you," she said, simply.

The master of the mines took it with a quick rush of gratitude, and

looking into the girl's eyes, saw something there that startled him, so

that he glanced quickly past her at the circle of booted men grouped in

the door behind her. They were each smiling in appreciation of the

tableau; her father and Ted, MacWilliams and Kirkland, and all the

others who had helped him. They seemed to envy, but not to grudge, the

whole credit which the girl had given to him.

Clay thought, "Why could it not have been the other?" But he said

aloud, "Thank YOU. You have given me my reward."

Miss Langham looked down impatiently into the valley below, and found

that it seemed more hot and noisy, and more grimy than before.