---"

"Bah!" interrupted the doctor, without stopping for an instant the idle
swinging movement of his legs. "Self-flattery. Food for that vanity
which makes the world go round. Meantime, what do you think is going to
happen to the treasure floating about the gulf with the great Capataz
and the great politician?"

"Why are you uneasy about it, doctor?"

"I uneasy! And what the devil is it to me? I put no spiritual value into
my desires, or my opinions, or my actions. They have not enough
vastness to give me room for self-flattery. Look, for instance, I should
certainly have liked to ease the last moments of that poor woman. And
I can't. It's impossible. Have you met the impossible face to face--or
have you, the Napoleon of railways, no such word in your dictionary?"

"Is she bound to have a very bad time of it?" asked the chief engineer,
with humane concern.

Slow, heavy footsteps moved across the planks above the heavy hard wood
beams of the kitchen. Then down the narrow opening of the staircase made
in the thickness of the wall, and narrow enough to be defended by one
man against twenty enemies, came the murmur of two voices, one faint and
broken, the other deep and gentle answering it, and in its graver tone
covering the weaker sound.

The two men remained still and silent till the murmurs ceased, then the
doctor shrugged his shoulders and muttered--

"Yes, she's bound to. And I could do nothing if I went up now."

A long period of silence above and below ensued.

"I fancy," began the engineer, in a subdued voice, "that you mistrust
Captain Mitchell's Capataz."

"Mistrust him!" muttered the doctor through his teeth. "I believe him
capable of anything--even of the most absurd fidelity. I am the last
person he spoke to before he left the wharf, you know. The poor woman up
there wanted to see him, and I let him go up to her. The dying must not
be contradicted, you know. She seemed then fairly calm and resigned,
but the scoundrel in those ten minutes or so has done or said something
which seems to have driven her into despair. You know," went on
the doctor, hesitatingly, "women are so very unaccountable in every
position, and at all times of life, that I thought sometimes she was in
a way, don't you see? in love with him--the Capataz. The rascal has his
own charm indubitably, or he would not have made the conquest of all the
populace of the town. No, no, I am not absurd. I may have given a wrong
name to some