gorged to bursting with steel springs and horsehair. There were
knick-knacks on little tables, mirrors let into the wall above marble
consoles, square spaces of carpet under the two groups of armchairs,
each presided over by a deep sofa; smaller rugs scattered all over the
floor of red tiles; three windows from the ceiling down to the ground,
opening on a balcony, and flanked by the perpendicular folds of the
dark hangings. The stateliness of ancient days lingered between the four
high, smooth walls, tinted a delicate primrose-colour; and Mrs. Gould,
with her little head and shining coils of hair, sitting in a cloud of
muslin and lace before a slender mahogany table, resembled a fairy posed
lightly before dainty philtres dispensed out of vessels of silver and
porcelain.

Mrs. Gould knew the history of the San Tome mine. Worked in the early
days mostly by means of lashes on the backs of slaves, its yield had
been paid for in its own weight of human bones. Whole tribes of Indians
had perished in the exploitation; and then the mine was abandoned, since
with this primitive method it had ceased to make a profitable return,
no matter how many corpses were thrown into its maw. Then it became
forgotten. It was rediscovered after the War of Independence. An English
company obtained the right to work it, and found so rich a vein that
neither the exactions of successive governments, nor the periodical
raids of recruiting officers upon the population of paid miners they had
created, could discourage their perseverance. But in the end, during the
long turmoil of pronunciamentos that followed the death of the famous
Guzman Bento, the native miners, incited to revolt by the emissaries
sent out from the capital, had risen upon their English chiefs and
murdered them to a man. The decree of confiscation which appeared
immediately afterwards in the Diario Official, published in Sta. Marta,
began with the words: "Justly incensed at the grinding oppression of