. Gould would look up from the
tea-table profoundly at her unmoved husband stirring the spoon in the
cup as though he had not heard a word.

Not that Don Jose anticipated anything of the sort. He could not praise
enough dear Carlos's tact and courage. His English, rock-like quality
of character was his best safeguard, Don Jose affirmed; and, turning to
Mrs. Gould, "As to you, Emilia, my soul"--he would address her with the
familiarity of his age and old friendship--"you are as true a patriot as
though you had been born in our midst."

This might have been less or more than the truth. Mrs. Gould,
accompanying her husband all over the province in the search for labour,
had seen the land with a deeper glance than a trueborn Costaguanera
could have done. In her travel-worn riding habit, her face powdered
white like a plaster cast, with a further protection of a small silk
mask during the heat of the day, she rode on a well-shaped, light-footed
pony in the centre of a little cavalcade. Two mozos de campo,
picturesque in great hats, with spurred bare heels, in white embroidered
calzoneras, leather jackets and striped ponchos, rode ahead with
carbines across their shoulders, swaying in unison to the pace of the
horses. A tropilla of pack mules brought up the rear in charge of a thin
brown muleteer, sitting his long-eared beast very near the tail, legs
thrust far forward, the wide brim of his hat set far back, making a sort
of halo for his head. An old Costaguana officer, a retired senior major
of humble origin, but patronized by the first families on account of
his Blanco opinions, had been recommended by Don Jose for commissary and
organizer of that expedition. The points of his grey moustache hung far
below his chin, and, riding on Mrs. Gould's left hand, he looked about
with kindly eyes, pointing out the features of the country, telling the
names of the little pueblos and of the estates, of the smooth-walled
haciendas like long fortresses crowning the knolls above the level of
the Sulaco Valley. It unrolled itself, with green young crops, plains,
woodland, and gleams of water, park-like, from the blue vapour of the
distant sierra to an immense quivering horizon of grass and sky, where
big white clouds seemed to fall slowly into the darkness of their own
shadows.

Men ploughed with wooden ploughs and yoked oxen, small on a boundless
expanse, as if attacking immensity itself. The mounted figures of
vaqueros galloped in the