But he had perforce preserved the conventions of the occasion, and addressed himself to an impartiality which he knew did not exist in the minds of the Cabinet Ministers. He had portrayed, and had not minced his words, the folly and ruin of the unnecessary step they contemplated. He enlarged, his fellow-bankers supporting him, on the precisely similar experiment of the United States, not yet emerged from twenty years of financial nightmare after the war greenbacks of 1861. He had quoted, for he had them fixed in his mind, the figures of the gold premium over the paper money of the States, and the colossal leaps that premium took-102 per cent in 1862, 170 per cent in 1863, 285 per cent in 1864, and so on. Was there ever such an object - lesson! He had dwelt upon the dangers of the easy path, the inevitability of fresh inflation of the circulating medium; and as he spoke, he had seen the conspirators smile secretly together, and so had his suspicions confirmed for certain.

It was indeed a hopeless case, for, besides the propounders of the scheme, the other members of the Junta del Gobierno were, first and foremost, Su Excellencia Don Javier Manterola, President of the Republic-a stupid mass of conceit, who stared with supercilious popeyes over coarse red cheeks and blue-black moustaches, too pompous to know himself for a dupe, hopelessly antagonised

from the start by any implied criticism of what he had been taught to look upon as his policy; second, General Aquiles Oyarzun, Minister of War, late Commander-in-Chief, a a goldlaced Moloch of a man, with the appearance, and very much the intelligence, of a stone image from Easter Island, who fiddled with his sword-hilt with unconcealed impatience while Don Alejandro spoke, and repeated like a parrot that the troops must be paid, whether with notes or gold, and since they had the notes they had better use them; third, Don Hector Zuñiga, Minister of Education, Chancellor of the University of the capital, a rabid doctrinaire and bitter fanatic, his head teeming with mistaken and half-assimilated economic theories, an advocate of the double standard, who argued with Don Alejandro with all the pedant's hatred of the practical expert, and lectured the conference with the pedagogue's desire to lay down the law, until their heads ached with the confused jumble of his ideas, which concealed the real issues under clouds of verbiage. An instrument, this latter, fashioned by the very hand of the devil for the purposes of the guilty triumvirate, who from first to last had no need to utter a word.

He had stood his ground, and fought out the foredoomed battle inch by inch, coldly and without excitement. Only once, when Zuñiga had paraded the time-worn fallacy that work

was plentiful where money was plentiful, had he been stung to

a sneer.

"I suppose you think the world is flat, too," he had said. They had made an appearance of taking notes, the President had promised, in a few pompous words, his consideration of what had passed; and Don Alejandro had turned his back, without a word, upon the ministers and upon his fellow bankers, who remained in excited conversation on the steps of the Casa del Gobierno. He would do what he could at the reassembly of the Senate, whenever that should be, but he was well aware that the Senators with whom he would have to deal would be puppets, bought and paid for by the ample paper resources which would be so soon available for the purchase of politicians.

years before, simply because you could not live with the wife of one of your patients in Harley Street, whereas you could live with anybody you wished in the Republic of San Martin, where foreigners were looked upon as beyond the pale of social usages in any case, especially if they were heretics; in fact, not very long before, these latter had been obliged by law to bury their dead below high-water mark. Their behaviour when alive was looked upon as too incomprehensible for criticism, wherefore Dr Locksley dwelt in San Martin, and the London hospitals were the poorer.

To him, then, seated at his desk in mid-afternoon, was admitted a tall and copper-visaged man of middle age, in a suit of formal black, with precise white linen and a black satin tie, fastened in the enormous knot of the prevailing fashion. His dark face was strongly

Don Alejandro Mackenzie, recalled to the present, stepped down between the bowing servants, and crossed the threshold of his town house.

On the corner of the Calle de Todos los Santos-the Street of All the Saints-was situated the consulting room of Oliver Locksley, M.D., F.R.C.S., a leader of his profession, author of many text-books which are standard works of reference even to this day. He had set up his brass plate there several

some clever craftsman who had not wasted a stroke, and with its uptwisted tufts of blueblack moustache resembled nothing so much as a Japanese mask. He looked what he was: a confidential clerk of proved integrity, his position of trust written all over him.

The doctor rose from his chair with more than his usual cordiality. He was among the many who knew and esteemed Don Mario Santelices, for so many years of the Banco de A. Mackenzie y Cia., who had risen, indeed, from clerk to

private secretary to Don Alejandro.

"Sirvase entrar, Don Mario," he cried as his visitor bowed with ceremony on the threshold. "I am both glad and sorry I do not see you here oftener."

The visitor made suitable acknowledgment, and took the proffered chair.

"And now," continued the physician, resuming his seat, "in what particular can I serve you, since unless I am much mistaken you are in no need of my poor advice for yourself?"

"There is no deceiving you, señor," replied Don Mario. "You are right. It is not for myself I have come. Indeed, I am not altogether sure that I have done right in coming. It is a little difficult to know where one's duty lies. One must not presume to take a liberty with him of all men; but yet I have been with him so many years, and I am anxious. I thought I knew him so well—”

'You are speaking of Don Alejandro" interjected the doctor.

Claro!" replied the secretary. "Have you not seen him lately? If you had, you would understand why I have come to consult you."

have said that he would live to be a hundred. A man of his abstemious life, you understand, his brain quite unimpaired, engrossed in the regular administration of the bank, which is in these times not a matter of strain, but merely an occupation-what was his present age to him? A month ago he was the Don Alejandro I had always known: cold, it is true, but just and patient. Now he is testy, like any other old man, and worse, he seems to be failing. In public he still keeps up appearances, but once or twice, when I have come into his room suddenly, I have been shocked at his appearance. He has a worn-out look, as if some hidden fever were consuming him. He does not eat. I have consulted privately with his mayordomo, who says the dishes come back from the table untasted. At night the servants hear him walking up and down when he should be sleeping. Don Olivero, you have been my master's physician for years. What is his complaint?

Pray go on," said the doctor. What ails Don Alejandro ? "

"Señor, I am gravely afraid," he replied earnestly. "A month ago, if you had asked, I should

are more nearly in his confidence than any other man. Can you not lay a finger on it?"

The secretary shook his head. "I had already considered that possibility. We are certainly very busy at presentDon Alejandro is making a complete revision of the affairs of the bank, and he has also on hand some very large operations on the London exchange market. No man is entirely in his confidence-not even I; but from whatever angle I study those operations, I can see no ground for anxiety. The bank was never more flourishing. With regard to his private life, you may say that of late years he has had no private life."

The doctor lifted an eyebrow. "Don Julio?" he inquired.

"Don Julio has just brought his mission in London to a most triumphant close. Any father might be proud of such a son."

“We are in the dark, then." The doctor knitted his brows. "Do you, Don Mario, continue to act as you have been doing -that is, protect him as much as possible from annoyance or friction. Meanwhile, I will make a point of seeing him, and if his trouble is not what I suspect, but merely some physical ailment, rest assured that I shall do what is necessary."

At half-past seven that evening Dr Locksley ascended the marble steps of the Club de la Constitucion. The physician made his way to the readingroom, sure that, unless he were bed ridden, Don Alejandro

VOL. CCXXI.-NO. MCCCXXXV.

The doctor, baulked in his approach, abruptly changed his tactics.

"Only that? I shouldn't have thought so. You look as if you'd been overworking, Don Alejandro. Better take a day or two off."

'Overwork! Either there's no such a thing, or I've been doing it all my life."

"Poof, my dear sir! A man of your good sense knows as much about what overwork can do as any doctor. I tell you seriously, you're not looking well. In your position you can't afford to play tricks with yourself. I'm your medical man, you know. Go down to your country place for a week, and forget about whatever it is that's on your mind. I can see there's something."

Don Alejandro had a momentary impulse towards confidence, a sudden desire to pour out his heart. But it was only a passing weakness, gone as soon as come. The dourness of his inarticulate nature, and his lifelong habit of silence, reasserted themselves. Besides, what could he have said?

"I tell ye," he remarked flatly, "I'm not ill. I'm not troubled at present by anything, forby a most impudent sawbones. With your permission I'll be on with my reading."

Four months later Dr Locksley received another visitor in his consulting-room-Don Julio Mackenzie, plump, blue-jowled, and olive-skinned, with quick

black eyes: a San Martinian of the San Martinians. But still, so tenacious is that northern strain, speaking English with that clear-cut purity which stamps the educated Scotsman, "You ask me what your father died of," the doctor was saying. "Well, my dear Don Julio, I will be frank with you. I don't know what your father died of. They called me over to the bank, but, of course, there was nothing to be done. He must have simply snuffed out like a candle as he sat at his desk. From my examination-a thorough one, I assure you-I can say that there was nothing whatever— physically-the matter with him. He was an extremely healthy specimen for his time of life, and ought to have lived another fifteen years. His trouble was mental. He had some secret weight upon his mind, which neither I nor any of his dependants, nor his friends-he had more, perhaps, than he was aware of-could locate. Perhaps, now that you have taken over the family affairs, you may be wiser in that respect."

The younger man shook his head.