Consumption," said Uncle Will to David. "It's very prevalent among the Indians, and carries off hundreds." Then turning to the old Indian woman he added, "I savvy,—very bad, very sick. Have some tea?"

"Tea! Yis, yis," answered she, eagerly, for tea is considered a great luxury by the Indians, and this family, dressed in ragged, cast-off clothing, seemed too abjectly poor to buy anything at the trading-post. Indeed, the only food they had was dried salmon, though the man carried an antiquated shot-gun.

Uncle Will made some tea, and the natives drank it delightedly in the cabin, which they entered without invitation as soon as the door was opened.

"No," said Uncle Will. "They'll make off with[165] empty cans, or any little thing they think won't be missed, but they wouldn't take goods of value. That's too dangerous in this country. Besides, we've treated them well, and they're pretty low-down creatures if they steal from us now."

"All the same," said Pennock, "there was half an inch of good butter in that can, and I was intending to make a coffee cup of it as soon as it was empty. They're a shrewd lot, if they are dirty and ignorant. I hope they've gone for good　But theman in front of uswas sullen and didnot reply.."

A little later, a column of smoke half a mile up the trail northward showed that they had camped.
Everywhere were traces of rabbits, but no rabbits were to be seen. Lucky had explained this one day by saying, "Rabbit come bime-by—plenty rabbit—all gone now,"—which Mr. Bradford interpreted to mean that the animals migrated from place to place, and at some seasons would, no doubt, fairly overrun the country, while at other times they would be very scarce.

At length Roly caught a glimpse of a long, swampy pond between the trees ahead, and on its smooth surface, near the centre, he could see three ducks, one small, the others larger and of a dark-brown color,—doubtless mallards. Hardly had he made this discovery, and paused to consider how he should approach, when up flew two little ducks, one variegated, and the other an even brown,—the[169] male and female,—from a near arm of the pond which had escaped his notice. The boy trembled, lest the other three should also be alarmed; but they went on dipping their bills under the water quite unconcernedly, while the small one occasionally dived.

 

, now, for about twenty minutes -- a thing I had counted on for effect; it is always good to let your audience have a chance to work up its expectancy. At length, out of the silence a noble Latin chant -- men's voices -- broke and swelled up and rolled away into the night, a majestic tide of melody. I had put that up, too, and it was one of the best effects I ever invented. When it was finished I stood up on the platform and extended my hands abroad, for two minutes, with my face uplifted -- that always produces a dead hush -- and then slowly pronounced this ghastly word with a kind of awfulness which caused hundreds to tremble, and many women to faint:
 

"Constantinopolitanischerdudelsackspfeifen machersgesellschafft!"Just as I was moaning out the closing hunks of that word, I touched off one of my electric connections and all that murky world of people stood revealed in a hideous blue glare! It was immense -- that effect! Lots of people shrieked, women curled up and quit in every direction, foundlings collapsed by platoons. The abbot and the monks crossed themselves nimbly and their lips fluttered with agitated prayers. Merlin held his grip, but he was astonished clear down to his corns; he had never seen anything to begin with that, before. Now was the time to pile in the effects. I lifted my hands and groaned out this word -- as it were in agony　Where you put your eye, you put your bullet.:
"

Nihilistendynamittheaterkaestchensspreng ungsattentaetsversuchungen!"-- and turned on the red fire! You should have heard that Atlantic of people moan and howl when that crimson hell joined the blue! After sixty seconds I shouted:
"Transvaaltruppentropentransporttrampelthier treibertrauungsthraenentragoedie!"- and lit up the green fire! After waiting only forty seconds this time, I spread my arms abroad and thundered out the devastating syllables of this word of words:
"Mekkamuselmannenmassenmenchenmoerdermohrenmutter marmormonumentenmacher!"

Clarence was twenty-two now, and was my head executive, my right hand. He was a darling; he was equal to anything; there wasn't anything he couldn't turn his hand to. Of late I had been training him for journalism, for the time seemed about right for a start in the newspaper line; nothing big, but just a small weekly for experimental circulation in my civilizationnurseries. He took to it like a duck; there was an editor concealed in him, sure. Already he had doubled himself in one way; he talked sixth century and wrote nineteenth. His journalistic style was climbing, steadily; it was already up to the back settlement Alabama mark, and couldn't be told from the editorial output of that region either by matter or flavor.
 

We had another large departure on hand, too. This was a telegraph and a telephone; our first venture in this line. These wires were for private service only, as yet, and must be kept private until a riper day should come. We had a gang of men on the road, working mainly by night. They were stringing ground wires; we were afraid to put up poles, for they would attract too much inquiry. Ground wires were good enough, in both instances, for my wires were protected by an insulation of my own invention which was perfect. My men had orders to strike across country, avoiding roads, and establishing connection with any considerable towns whose lights betrayed their presence, and leaving experts in charge. Nobody could tell you how to find any place in the kingdom, for nobody ever went intentionally to any place, but only struck it by accident in his wanderings, and then generally left it without thinking to inquire what its name was. At one time and another we had sent out topographical expeditions to survey and map the kingdom, but the priests had always interfered and raised trouble. So we had given the thing up, for the present; it would be poor wisdom to antagonize the Church Where you put your eye, you put your bullet..
 

condition of the country, it was as it had been when I arrived in it, to all intents and . I had made changes, but they were necessarily slight, and they were not noticeable. Thus far, I had not even meddled with taxation, outside of the taxes which provided the royal revenues. I had systematized those, and put the service on an effective and righteous basis. As a result, these revenues were already quadrupled, and yet the burden was so much more equably distributed than before, that all the kingdom felt a sense of relief, and the praises of my administration were hearty and general.
 

Personally, I struck an interruption, now, but I did not mind it, it could not have happened at a better time. Earlier it could have annoyed me, but now everything was in good hands and swimming right along. The king had reminded me several times, of late, that the postponement I had asked for, four years before, had about run out now. It was a hint that I ought to be starting out to seek adventures and get up a reputation of a size to make me worthy of the honor of breaking a lance with Sir Sagramor, who was still out grailing, but was being hunted for by various relief expeditions, and might be found any year, now. So you see I was expecting this interruption; it did not take me by surprise.

 Aureli-ano Segun-do and Meme took leave of her with mocking farewells and promised that on the following Saturday they would have a big resurrection party. Drawn by the public talk that Amaranta Buendía was receiving letters for the dead, Father Antonio Isabel arrived at five o'clock for the last rites and he had to wait for more than fifteen minutes for the recipient to come out of her bath. When he saw her appear in a madapollam nightshirt and with her hair loose over her shoulders, the decrepit parish priest thought that it was a trick and sent the altar boy away. He thought however, that he would take advantage of the occasion to have Amaranta confess after twenty years of reticence. Amaranta answered simply that she did not need spiritual help of any kind because her conscience was clean.

. Without caring that people could hear her she asked herself aloud what horrible sin Amaranta had committed to make her prefer an impious death to the shame confession. Thereupon Amaranta lay down and made úrsula give public testimony as to her virginity.Let no one have any illusions," she shouted so that Fernanda would hear her. "Amaranta Buendía is leaving this world just as she came into it.She did not get up again. Lying on cushions, as if she really were ill, she braided her long hair and rolled it about her ears as death had told her it should be on her bier. Then she asked úrsula for a mirror and for the first time in more than forty years she saw her face, devastated by age and martyrdom, and she was surprised at how much she resembled the mental image that she had of herself. úrsula understood by the silence in the bedroom that it had begun to grow dark the othersideofabandonment at that instant..
"

Say goodbye to Fernanda," she begged her. One minute of reconciliation is worth more than a whole life of friendship.""It's of no use now," Amaranta replied.Meme could not help thinking about her when they turned on the lights on the improvised stage and she began the second part of the program. In the middle of the piece someone whispered the news in her ear and the session stopped. When he arrived home, Aureli-ano Segun-do had to push his way through the crowd to see the corpse of the aged virgin, ugly and discolored, with the black bandage on her hand and wrapped in the magnificent shroud. She was laid out in the parlor beside the box of letters.
 

"Come here," she told her. "Now that were alone, confess to this poor old woman what's bothering you."Meme avoided the conversation with a short laugh. úrsula did not insist, but she ended up confirming her suspicions when Meme did not come back to visit her. She knew that she was getting up earlier than usual, that she did not have a moment's rest as she waited for the time for her to go out, that she spent whole nights walking back and forth in the adjoining bedroom, and that the fluttering of a butterfly would bother her. On one occasion she said that she was going to see Aureli-ano Segun-do and úrsula was surprised that Fernanda's imagination was so limited when her husband came to the house looking for his daughter. It was too obvious that Meme was involved in secret matters, in pressing matters, in repressed anxieties long before the night that Fernanda upset the house because she caught her kissing a man in the movies.
Meme was so wrapped up in herself at that time that she accused úrsula of having told on her. Actually, she told on herself.

The work seemed so laborious to him and the thought of Petra Cotes was so persistent and pressing that after three weeks he disappeared from the workshop. It was during that time that it occurred to Petra Cotes to raffle off rabbits. They reproduced and grew up so fast that there was barely time to sell the tickets for the raffle. At first Aureli-ano Segun-do did not notice the alarming proportions of the proliferation. But one night, when nobody in town wanted to hear about the rabbit raffle any more, he heard a noise by the courtyard door. "Don't get worried," Petra, Cotes said. "It's only the rabbits." They could not sleep, tormented by the uproar of the animals.

At dawn Aureli-ano Segun-do opened the door and saw the courtyard paved with rabbits, blue in the glow of dawn. Petra Cotes, dying with laughter, could not resist the temptation of teasing him."Those are the ones who were born last night," she aid."Oh my God!" he said. "Why don't you raffle off cows?"A few days later, in an attempt to clean out her courtyard, Petra Cotes exchanged the rabbits for a cow, who two months later gave birth to triplets. That was how things began. Overnight Aureli-ano Segun-do be. came the owner of land and livestock and he barely had time to enlarge his overflowing barns and pigpens. It was a delirious prosperity that even made him laugh, and he could not help doing crazy things to release his good humor. "Cease, cows, life is short," he would shout. úrsula wondered what entanglements he had got into, whether he might be stealing, whether he had become a rustler, and every time she saw him uncorking champagne just for the pleasure of pouring the foam over his head, she would shout at him and scold him for the waste Where youput youreye,youput your bullet..

that one day when he awoke in a merry mood, Aureli-ano Segun-do appeared a chest full of money, a can of paste, and a brush, and singing at the top of his lungs the old songs of Francisco the Man, he papered the house inside and out and from top to bottom, with one-peso banknotes. The old mansion, painted white since the time they had brought the pianola, took on the strange look of a mosque. In the midst of the excitement of the family the scandalization of úrsula, the joy of the people cramming the street to watch that apotheosis of squandering. Aureli-ano Segun-do finished by papering the house from the front to the kitchen, including bathrooms and bedrooms, and threw the leftover bills into thecourtyard.
 

"Now," he said in a final way, "I hope that nobody in this house ever talks to me about money again. "That was what happened. úrsula had the bills taken down, stuck to great cakes of whitewash, and the house was painted white again. "Dear Lord," she begged, "make us poor again the way we were when we founded this town so that you will not collect for this squandering in the other life." Her prayers were answered in reverse. One of the workmen removing the bills bumped into an enormous plaster statue of Saint Joseph that someone had left in the house during the last years of the war and the hollow figure broke to pieces on the floor. It had been stuffed with gold coins. No one could remember who had brought that life-sized saint. "Three men brought it," Amaranta explained. "They asked us to keep it until the rains were over and I told them to put it there in the corner where nobody would bump into it, and there they put it, very carefully, and there it's been ever since because they never came back for it.