t man a sort of sane, humorous
shrewdness, and a vein of genuine humanity so often found in simple
old soldiers of proved courage who have seen much desperate service. Of
course he knew nothing whatever of mining, but his employment was of a
special kind. He was in charge of the whole population in the territory
of the mine, which extended from the head of the gorge to where the cart
track from the foot of the mountain enters the plain, crossing a stream
over a little wooden bridge painted green--green, the colour of hope,
being also the colour of the mine.

It was reported in Sulaco that up there "at the mountain" Don Pepe
walked about precipitous paths, girt with a great sword and in a shabby
uniform with tarnished bullion epaulettes of a senior major. Most miners
being Indians, with big wild eyes, addressed him as Taita (father), as
these barefooted people of Costaguana will address anybody who wears
shoes; but it was Basilio, Mr. Gould's own mozo and the head servant
of the Casa, who, in all good faith and from a sense of propriety,
announced him once in the solemn words, "El Senor Gobernador has
arrived."

Don Jose Avellanos, then in the drawing-room, was delighted beyond
measure at the aptness of the title, with which he greeted the old major
banteringly as soon as the latter's soldierly figure appeared in the
doorway. Don Pepe only smiled in his long moustaches, as much as to say,
"You might have found a worse name for an old soldier."

And El Senor Gobernador he had remained, with his small jokes upon
his function and upon his domain, where he affirmed with humorous
exaggeration to Mrs. Gould--

"No two stones could come together anywhere without the Gobernador
hearing the click, senora."

And he would tap his ear with the tip of his forefinger knowingly. Even
when the number of the miners alone rose to over six hundred he seemed
to know each of them individually, all the innumerable Joses, Manuels,
Ignacios, from the villages _primero--segundo--or tercero_ (there were
three mining villages) under his government. He could distinguish them
not only by their flat, joyless faces, which to Mrs. Gould looked
all alike, as if run into the same ancestral mould of suffering and
patience, but apparently also by the infinitely graduated shades of
reddish-brown, of blackish-brown, of coppery-brown backs, as the two
shifts, stripped to linen drawers and leather skull-caps, mingled
together with a confusion of naked li