qualities which had served him so well in his long life, were turning to smite him now. For he saw, with a vision so clear as almost to magnify, the menaces which threatened his unconscious country, under the coming despotism of that worst of all tyrants, Bad Money. Inflation n; a falling exchange abroad, a slipping and sliding of values at home; rising food prices and discontent, possible civil commotion amongst the peones, smitten by an evil they did not understand; a widespread debauching of public life, with the business of the nation set aside in a struggle between political parties for control of the printing press, the source of easy wealth; loss of confidence abroad, the driving away of capital; the slow constructive effort of the years undone. The devil danced before him in the form of a paper note, with its lying promise to pay what its issuers neither could nor wanted to pay. He felt an actual physical ache at the thought of it. Better for Don Alejandro, in the fulness of his years, if he had been a dullard.

Ordinarily, his drive through the Plaza de Armas to his town house was a triumphal progress, a benediction on his white hairs. There was a constant flourish of hats from the strolling throng; personages in other carriages passed ceremonious greetings; a huaso from some big estate, in flaring crimson poncho and tasselled hat, reined back his horse to

make way, with cruel jabs of the three-inch rowels of his silver spurs, and bowed to the high peak of his wooden saddle. But to-day Don Alejandro felt a blight upon it all. Who were these people who saluted him from the pavement ? He scarcely knew one in a dozen. Ten years ago things were different. How one's old friends did vanish when one passed middle age. And-incredible sight!-over there was a lady, wife of young Undurraga, his old friend's son, on foot at mid-day, wearing a hat European hat! He wondered what his mother would have made of it. In her day, and in his too, if you saw a woman wearing a hat in the morning, you knew what she was. Decent people wore a manto, and ladies did not jostle upon the pavement among a crowd of men. Times were changing

a

slackening. How old he felt.

He found himself musing again on the cabinet meeting he had attended that morning, with the heads of the other banks, to be consulted (as a matter of form only, for three men behind closed doors had made their decision months before) about that bolt from the blue, the new paper currency. How well they had kept their secret, those derrotistas, those defeatists, who intended to sacrifice their country in cold blood for the power of setting the cat of exchange on the jump-the whole precious plan made, the notes printed and in the country, ready for

circulation, and not a soul the wiser. He remembered the incredulous faces of his colleagues as the project was the project was unfolded, the half-amused contempt of Smith, the local manager of the Bank of London and Rio Bueno, when the full details were known; for at first they had anticipated nothing worse than a convertible note issue, based on gold. Smith could afford to be amused, with his reserves safely tucked away in Lombard Street. Whatever the Government of San Martin might do was opera bouffe to him, the funny antics of "natives" aping civilisation. Once, years ago, the manager of a privately owned English bank had said that the Banco de A. Mackenzie was run "in the native style," and the remark had come to his ears. He had said nothing, but he had invested quietly for many months in the paper of that English bank, and its manager had sung another tune when the whole hoard was presented for conversion one fine morning. The face of Smith reminded him of that other English face so long ago; but this time there was no possible retort.

Arancibia, Minister of Finance; Sanfuentes, President of the State Bank of San Martin; Benavides, Minister of Home Affairs-how well they had seized their opportunity! He saw it all as well as if he had been a party to it. With the Senate sessions suspended, and the Emergency War Cabi

net wielding autocratic power; with Torrealba, the Vice-President, shrewd, capable, a patriot, absent this twelve months on a special mission in Puerto Melon, the Platarican capital, settling the peace terms with such representatives as could be induced to appear for that shattered and disrupted adversary ; with the public purse depleted by the costs of the war, and money tight and taxes heavy

what better occasion could ever arise for the issue of paper money, with an appearance of justification ? And behind the screen of public necessity, what a royal chance for plunder by those who controlled the tap of the paper stream! A judicious purchase of ninety days sight drafts on London at the present rate of fortyseven pence to the dollar, a turn of the tap, sending the value of the peso down a few points, and a resale of the purchase before settling day— mail day, as it was called: result, a comfortable sum in pesos, coming by magic from nowhere, and reproducible at will by those who controlled the turning of the tap. It would be done, of course, through agents, dummies, palos blancos, whose connection could never be proved, under the present system of forward transactions in exchange, with their exalted employers.

He had done his best, knowing before he began the hopelessness of the case, for was he not a San Martinian born, and wise in the ways of roguery ?

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 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?"