m--see?" he exulted, candidly. "I hold him
by that name better than if I had him chained up by the leg to the deck
of the steam-launch.

"And mark," he added, after a pause, "he does not deny it. I am not
wronging him in any way. He is a convict of some sort, anyhow."

"But I suppose you pay him some wages, don't you?" I asked.

"Wages! What does he want with money here? He gets his food from
my kitchen and his clothing from the store. Of course I'll give him
something at the end of the year, but you don't think I'd employ a
convict and give him the same money I would give an honest man? I am
looking after the interests of my company first and last."

I admitted that, for a company spending fifty thousand pounds every
year in advertising, the strictest economy was obviously necessary. The
manager of the Maranon Estancia grunted approvingly.

"And I'll tell you what," he continued: "if I were certain he's an
anarchist and he had the cheek to ask me for money, I would give him
the toe of my boot. However, let him have the benefit of the doubt. I
am perfectly willing to take it that he has done nothing worse than
to stick a knife into somebody--with extenuating circumstances--French
fashion, don't you know. But that subversive sanguinary rot of doing
away with all law and order in the world makes my blood boil. It's
simply cutting the ground from under the feet of every decent,
respectable, hard-working person. I tell you that the consciences of
people who have them, like you or I, must be protected in some way; or
else the first low scoundrel that came along would in every respect be
just as good as myself. Wouldn't he, now? And that's absurd!"

He glared at me. I nodded slightly and murmured that doubtless there was
much subtle truth in his view.

The principal truth discoverable in the views of Paul the engineer was
that a little thing may bring about the undoing of a man.

"_Il ne faut pas beaucoup pour perdre un homme_," he said to me,
thoughtfully, one evening.

I report this reflection in French, since the man was of Paris, not of
Barcelona at all. At the Maranon he lived apart from the station, in
a small shed with a metal roof and straw walls, which he called
mon atelier. He had a work-bench there. They had given him several
horse-blankets and a saddle--not that he ever had occasion to ride, but
because no other bedding was used by the working-hands, who were all
vaqueros--cattlemen. And on this horsem