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 other about this wretched silver. But I bring you a better opportunity—let me go, hombre!"

Nostromo released him abruptly, and the doctor feared that the indispensable man would run off again. But he did not. He walked on slowly. The doctor hobbled by his side till, within a stone's-throw from the Casa Viola, Nostromo stopped again.

Silent in inhospitable darkness, the Casa Viola seemed to have changed its nature; his home appeared to repel him with an air of hopeless and inimical mystery. The doctor said:

"You will be safe there. Go in, capataz."

"How can I go in?" Nostromo seemed to ask himself in a low, inward tone. "She cannot unsay what she said, and I cannot undo what I have done."

"I tell you it is all right. Viola is all alone in there. I looked in as I came out of the town. You will be perfectly safe in that house till you leave it to make your name famous on the Campo. I am going now to arrange for your departure with the engineer-in-chief, and I shall bring you news here long' before daybreak."

Dr. Monygham, disregarding or perhaps fearing to penetrate the meaning of Nostromo's silence, clapped him lightly on the shoulder, and, starting off with his smart lame walk, vanished utterly at the third or fourth hop in the direction of the railway-track. Arrested between the two wooden posts for people to fasten their horses to, Nostromo did not move, as if he too had been planted solidly in the ground. At the end of half an hour he lifted his head to the deep baying of the dogs at the railway-yards, which had burst