show them. Accordingly he produced a small casket filled with gold. "Here is the God whom they serve and after whom they go; and, as you have heard, already they are longing to pass over to this place, not pretending more than to seek this God; wherefore let us make to him here a festival and dances, so that when they come, He may tell them to do us no harm." (Herrera.)

The Indios approved this council, and to propitiate the God whom they thought their enemies worshipped, they danced around it until they were exhausted; when the cacique turned to them and said that they should not keep the God of the Christians anywhere, for were it even in their entrails it would be torn out; but that they should throw it in the river that the Christians might not know where it was; "and there," says the account, "they threw it."

In 1503, Ovando set out with seventy horsemen and 300 foot-soldiers to visit the friendly Queen Anacaona of Xaragua, who hospitably received him with feasting and rejoicing. In return, Ovando, whose object was to terrify the unhappy natives into submission and slavery, invited the chiefs to a mock tournament, where, at a signal from himself, the queen and her caciques were all treacherously captured, the former was put to death by hanging and the latter were burnt alive.

Shortly afterwards, in an expedition against the Indios of the province of Higuey, the Spaniards cut off the hands of their captives, hanged thirteen of them "in honour and reverence of Christ our Lord and His twelve Apostles," and used the hanging bodies of their miserable victims as dumb figures to try their swords upon. At another time, the Indios were burnt alive in a sort of wooden cradle. "Todo esto yo lo vide con mis ojos corporales mortales." All this I saw with my own corporeal mortal eyes. (Las Casas.)

Queen Isabella of Spain died in November, 1504. Could she with her dying eyes have seen into the Far West, she

would have "beheld the Indian laboring at the mine under the most cruel buffetings, his family neglected, perishing, or enslaved; she would have marked him on his return, after eight months of dire toil, enter a place which knew him not, or a household that could only sorrow over the gaunt creature who had returned to them, and mingle their sorrows with his; or, still more sad, she would have seen Indians who had been brought from far distant homes, linger at the mines, too hopeless or too careless to return."

Isabella's will contained a bequest which unfortunately removed all restraint from the oppressions visited upon the Indios. She left to her widower, the Regent Ferdinand, one-half of the revenues of the Indies as a life estate. In the methods which were resorted to for the collection of these revenues, this meant one-half of the gold which could be extorted by the sweat and blood of the Indios; and Ferdinand, needy and thus endowed, withheld no license to the adventurers in America, which they alleged was needful in order to swell the Fifths due to the Crown, and the importance of the Queen's legacy.

Upon the death of Isabella, Ferdinand, not being the immediate heir to the crown of Spain, retired to his kingdom of Naples, and was succeeded in the government of Spain by King Philip. This monarch died in 1506, and Ferdinand then became King of Spain. A few months before this, Columbus had died, and, like all the other Conquistadores, in poverty and debt.

At this period the Indios had become "a sort of money" which was granted in repartimiento to favorites at the Spanish court. "The mania for gold finding was now propably at its height, and the sacrifice of Indian life proportionately great." So few of the Indios remained alive that negro slaves began to be imported from Africa to fill their places at the mines.

The king was told that the Bahama

Islands were full of Indios who might be transported to Hispaniola in order that "they might assist in getting gold, and the king be much served." Ferdinand, who was fully as mindful of his interests as the adventurers upon the islands, gave the required license, and the evil work commenced. In five years time, forty thousand of the Bahamians, captured under every circumstance of treachery and cruelty, were transported across the sea, all of them to die lingering deaths at the gold

mines.

This was among the last acts of the Ovando administration, which closed with the appointment of Diego ColumDus in 1509. Only seventeen years had elapsed since the discovery of the is

land. According to Humboldt's "Fluctuations of Gold," the amount of gold thus far obtained was scarcely more than five million dollars. The cost of its production was several expensive expeditions with their outfits, some thousands of Spanish lives, and at least a million and a half of Indios!

Such was the cruelty of the goldhunters, and the terror they inspired in the natives, that according to the Abbe Raynal, when Drake captured San Domingo in 1586, he learned from the few survivors of what had once been a populous country that, rather than become the fathers of children who might be subjected to the treatment they had endured, they had unanimously refrained from conjugal intercourse!

IT

T was a big, wide-porched, greenshuttered farm house, old-fashioned and built for comfort. The rows upon rows of trees that intervened between it and the curving country road gave it a certain air of aloofness that was accentuated rather than relieved by the throngs of people who now lined the shady walks and crowded the porches and spacious chambers.

It was not a palatial house, by any means, but it was a very comfortable one. Eben Wainwright took a great deal of satisfaction in the thought that his family had always known a comfortable home.

He sauntered down to the barn that morning for a last look at the sleek, fat cattle eating contentedly at the ricks, but the unaccustomed throng of people who tied their teams to his fence and filed gapingly through his front gate discomfited him terribly, and he turned

back aimlessly in the direction of the house.

He was a big-boned, powerful man, whose sixty-five years, spent for the most part in the fields, had marvelously preserved his vitality. His face was bronzed and white-bearded, his eyes grey and level-gazed. There was about him the quiet air of self-reliance and determination that had made four generations of Wainwrights the most important factors in the community.

He stopped at the old spring house that his wife's fathers had built so many years before and dipped the gourd into the cool, black depths.

It seemed to him that the water had never tasted quite so good. While he stood drinking slowly, an old man came hobbling down the secluded path that led from the house to the spring, where the crowd had not yet trespassed. He approached Wainwright with an

em

barrassment which, despite a half century of friendship, he was unable to conceal.

"Eben!" he cried, his old voice shaking gustily, "is this true-what Nancy tells my Marthy?"

Wainwright eyed his old neighbor steadily before answering.

For a moment the words stuck in John Marley's throat.

"That-that you're goin' to-to-separate?" he blundered finally, as if the accusation were too monstrous to make against a man and woman.

Wainwright's jaws came together with a snap.

"It was the agreement between us that nobody outside our own family, except Lawyer Wilson and Colonel Moffet was to know till every thing was over. Nancy had no business to tell Martha nor nobody else," he replied gruffly.

"Then it's true!" ejaculated Marley, aghast. "Why, Eben, Marthy thought that Nancy had gone plum crazy when she told her about it. Even puttin' her story alongside this auction and sale business didn't convince us. We just thought she had gone plum daft. But don't blame Nancy for it. You see, she's knowed Marthy all her life, and she said she jest had to open her heart to someone-but, oh don't blame herit won't get no furder with us. My God, man, after all these years, workin' and enjoyin' and sufferin' side by side, can't the thing be patched up some way, can't"

"There, now, John Marley, don't meddle," blazed Wainwright; "it's our own affair. Each one of us has chosen his road and we're going to stick by that choice-leastways I am. Things have gone too far now for me to change my mind as long's I've got a speck of pride left. It's our affair, so let alone."

us

He hung up the gourd and stalked sternly along the path to the house. He avoided the porches and entered by

the side door that opened on the rear hall. The lower portion of the house was thrown open and he glimpsed his wife in the big front room to the left.

She moved about the groups of unsuspecting friends who crowded the room, her face serene and apparently untroubled. Watching her furtively, Wainwright filled with bitter rage that she could be so untouched by the trag eay of their lives. Proud as he knew her to be, he had thought—in the little time the whirl of trouble had given him for thinking that somehow, her pride must yield to his stubbornness in this case, as it had so often done before. But it had not, and the breach had widened until it was a chasm which threatened to engulf the happiness of the few years left to them.

With a sudden defiant lifting of the head he entered the room to the right. About him were men and women whom he had known all of his life. There were wives and husbands whose playmates he had been and whose children had been reared almost with his own. He mingled with them as had always been his custom, and was kept busy explaining what he and his wife had given out already by agreement-that they were tired of farming, that the old life was too hard for them, and that they had determined to "auction off" everything and move to the city for a change.

It was only a makeshift to soften the blow of the ultimate announcement, from the publicity of which both still shrank. Wainwright, who all his life had hated subterfuges and who was given to speak the truth bluntly, found the new task no easy one. It irritated him to know that his wife, who had always been so dependent upon him, could face the ordeal with such apparent composure.

The two old friends whom they had found it necessary to acquaint with their plans had received the news as they would have received the word of

the old couples death. The lawyer thought it was to have been expected long ago of people as proud as Eben Wainwright and his wife. Colonel Moffet shrewdly blamed the disaster upon the meddlesome children, who had inherited the temper and pride of their respective parents along with some less desirable qualities from more distant forbears.

At five minutes of ten Colonel Moffet left his place on the porch and entered the house. His keen. black eyes traveled over the faces around him until they met Wainwright's. He beckoned the old farmer to him and drew him back to the rear hall.

"Eben, you're still determined to sell out and" He did not finish the sentence.

Wainwright's level gaze met the anxious eyes of his life-time friend.

"I'd have told you if I'd changed my mind," he said grimly.

Without another word Colonel Moffet made his way back to the front room. He was white-haired, silveryvoiced old gentleman of the type which is too fast disappearing. Every man, woman and child for miles around knew him and loved him. Educated for the law, he had returned from the Civil War and taken up the more humble calling of auctioneer for reasons he had never deigned to give, although

there were those who declared that his unrequited love for the girl Wainright had married had taken all the zest of life from him and left him ambitionless. For years his auctions had been the events of the country side. They rivalled the comings of the most noted political speakers, both in the crowds they drew and the entertainment they afforded.

As he took a position near the piano and raised his hand for silence, his usual gaiety of manner gave way to a solemnity that was almost ministerial. "Friends," he began, "you all know that nothing but the best ever came into

this house. Eben and Nancy Wainright are too genuine themselves to have ever permitted anything shoddy about them. The fact that an article is sold from this house is a guarantee that it is the best that money can buy.

"I shall start the day's business with the sale of this grand piano. You know this instrument-most of you have sung or danced to its music right here in this room. They made honest pianos forty-five years ago, friends, because they made honest men then. Nancy Wainright's father gave her this piano when she was a girl seventeen years old. It was a birthday gift, and I remember as well as if it had been yesterday the day they brought it up to the door there. It took a four-horse team to haul it from the station, and while I'll admit that the roads were a trifle bad then, it gives you an idea of the weight of it. There's no veneer in this case-it's all solid mahogany. "And the tone! The first time I heard Nancy play it made me think of rainbows of sound! It was one night when she was home from the Hopedale Seminary. Eben was there that night -he had just begun keeping company with Nancy then-and there were a few others whom I see here now-Luke Walden and his wife there in the corner, and the Widow Phillips over there by the door, and the Malthys out in the

other room.

"My! I'll never forget how Nancy played The Maiden's Prayer,' and 'The Storm' that was a terribly difficult piece-thunder and lightning and rain and all that sort of thing in it. Then there was 'Silvery Waves' and "The Black Key Mazurka!' And when she had finished the fancy music that she had learned at the Seminary, she cut loose on Tucker' and 'Speed the Plough' and 'The Devil's Dream.' Her father was a red-hot Methodist those days and when Nancy came to those tunes some of us young folks sneaked out and danced them on the lawn. All but