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Strawbridge was shocked.

“Why, that's outrageous! What do the people stand for it for? Why don't they raise hell and stop any such crooked deals? Why, in America, do you know how long we would stand for that kind of stuff? Just one minute—” he reached forward and tapped Gumersindo two angry taps on the shoulder—“just one minute; that's all.”

Lubito laughed gaily.

“Yes, La Rotunda to-day is full of men who stood that sort of thing for one minute—and then raised hell.”

Strawbridge looked around at the bull-fighter.

“But, my dear man, if everybody, everybody would go in, who could stop them?”

Gumersindo made a gesture.

“Señor Strawbridge, there is no ‘everybody’ in Venezuela. Wben you say ‘everybody’ you are speaking as an American, of your American middle class. That is the controlling power in America because it is sufficiently educated and compact to make its majority felt. We have no such class in Venezuela. We have an aristocratic class struggling for power, and a great peon population too ignorant for any political action whatsoever. The only hope for Venezuela is a beneficent dictator, and you, señor, on this journey, are about to instate such a man and bring all these atrocities to a close.”

A touch of the missionary spirit kindled in Strawbridge at the thought that he might really bring a change in such leprous conditions, but almost immediately his mind turned back to the order he was about to receive, how large it would be, how many rifles, how much ammunition, and he fell into a lovely day-dream as the tropical landscape slipped past him.

At thirty- or forty-mile intervals the travelers found villages, and at each one they were forced to report to the police department their arrival and departure. Such is the law in Venezuela. It is an effort to keep watch on any considerable