yon? Building
Spanish castles?"

"Watching Spanish castles fall," said Lola, smiling. "What would you
do," she went on lightly, "if you had planned something worth while,
and it became impossible?"

The doctor looked down at her young, questioning face. It was grave,
although she spoke gaily, and looked so mere a slip of girlhood with
her brown throat and cheek and lifted black-lashed eyes.

Unexpectedly the doctor remembered when he, too, had meant to do things
that should be "worth while." He thought of Berlin and Vienna and
Paris, and the clinics where he had meant to acquire such skill as,
aiding his zeal, should write him among the first physicians of his
day. And here he was, practising among a few Mexicans and miners,
tending their bruises, doling them out quinine, and taking pay of a
dollar a month from every man, sick or well, enrolled on the mine
books, and frequently getting nothing at all from such as were not
therein enrolled. Never a volume of his had startled the world of
science. Surgery was bare of his exploits. Medical annals knew him not.
All he had thought to do was undone by him; and yet here he was,
contented, happy and healthy in a realm of little duties. In so
unpretentious a life as this he had found satisfaction; and for the
first time it came upon him that thus simply and calmly satisfaction
comes to the great mass of men who have nothing to do with glory or
hope of glory.

"When great things become impossible, what would you do?" said Lola,
tossing back her long, braided hair.

"I would do little things," said the doctor, with whimsical soberness.

An unusual equipage was turning in from the Trinidad road--an equipage
on which leather and varnish shone, and harness brasses flashed, while
the dust rolled pompously after it in a freakish fantasy of postilions
and outriders. The driver made a great business of his long whip. The
horses were sleek and brown. Altogether the vehicle had a lordly air,
easily matching that of the individual sitting alone on the purple
cushions--a man whose features were not very clear at the distance,
although the yellowness of his beard, the glitter of his studded
shirt-front, and whole consequential, expansive effect recalled to the
doctor's mind an image of the past, less ornate, indeed, and affluent,
but of similar aspect. He narrowed his eyes, staring townward over
Lola's head, and wondering if yonder princely personage might not in
very truth be Lola's