MacWilliams and Langham sat panting on the lower steps of the
office-porch considering whether they were too lazy to clean
themselves and be rowed over to the city, where, as it was Sunday
night, was promised much entertainment. They had been for the
last hour trying to make up their minds as to this, and appealing
to Clay to stop work and decide for them. But he sat inside at a
table figuring and writing under the green shade of a student's
lamp and made no answer. The walls of Clay's office were of
unplaned boards, bristling with splinters, and hung with blue
prints and outline maps of the mine. A gaudily colored portrait
of Madame la Presidenta, the noble and beautiful woman whom
Alvarez, the President of Olancho, had lately married in Spain,
was pinned to the wall above the table. This table, with its
green oil-cloth top, and the lamp, about which winged insects
beat noisily, and an earthen water-jar--from which the water
dripped as regularly as the ticking of a clock--were the only
articles of furniture in the office. On a shelf at one side of
the door lay the men's machetes, a belt of cartridges, and a
revolver in a holster.

Clay rose from the table and stood in the light of the open door,
stretching himself gingerly, for his joints were sore and
stiff with fording streams and climbing the surfaces of rocks.
The red ore and yellow mud of the mines were plastered over his
boots and riding-breeches, where he had stood knee-deep in the
water, and his shirt stuck to him like a wet bathing-suit,
showing his ribs when he breathed and the curves of his broad
chest. A ring of burning paper and hot ashes fell from his
cigarette to his breast and burnt a hole through the cotton
shirt, and he let it lie there and watched it burn with a grim