his country."

The lips had full play now, the smile of contempt wrinkling up to his
eyelids.

"Saviour of his country! Saviour of his pocket! Pardon me; I am not
here to discuss the polities of our people. Is this your estimate?" And
he reached over and picked it from my desk. "Ah, yes: forty thousand
dollars for the ironwork; one hundred and twenty thousand for the
erection on the Lobo Reef; one hundred and sixty thousand in all. Thank
you." Here he tucked the paper in his pocket and rose from his seat.
"You will hear from me in a month, perhaps earlier. Good-day." And he
waddled out.

The return of the Tampico six weeks later brought another South
American consignment. This was a roll of plans concealed in a tin
case--the identical package which Mawkum had handed the "Bunch of Dried
Garlic" months before, together with a document stamped, restamped and
stamped again, containing an order in due form, signed "Carlos
Onativia," for a lighthouse to be erected on the "Garra de Lobo"--this
last was in red ink--with shipping directions, etc., etc.

With it came the clerk of the bankers (he had the case under his arm),
a reputable concern within a stone's throw of my office, who signed the
contract and paid the first instalment.

Then followed the erection of the ironwork in the Brooklyn yard; its
inspection by the engineer appointed by the bankers; its dismemberment
and final coat of red lead--each tie-rod and beam red as sticks of
sealing-wax--its delivery, properly bundled and packed, aboard a
sailing vessel bound for San Juan, and the payment of the last
instalment.

This closed the transaction, so far as we were concerned.

A year passed--two of them, in fact--during which time no news of any
kind reached us of the lighthouse. Mawkum kept the duplicate blue-print
of the elevation tacked on the wall over his desk to show our clients
the wide range of our business, and I would now and then try to
translate the newspapers which Lawton sent by every mail. These would
generally refer to the dissatisfaction felt by many of the Moccadorians
over the present government, one editorial, as near as I could make
out, going so far as to hint that a secret movement was on foot to oust
the "Usurper" Alvarez and restore the old government under Paramba. No
reference was ever made to the lighthouse. We knew, of course, that it
had arrived, for the freight had been paid: this we learned from the
brokers who shipped it; but wheth