month, though she had never been near the house all that time, and she promptly said she could not stay with us any longer, and left.  We nearly got to No. 11, as we engaged a girl to come at $20 a month to start with, and she was to come the next morning at eight o’clock to begin work.  She arrived at 10 a.m., and informed me that, as we had paid our last servant $25 the month, she could not come for less.  I was so sick and tired of my experiences that this finished me, and I decided to do without any servant.  Since then, for the last year, I have done the work myself.

POLICE OF A BYGONE DAY.

POLICE OF A BYGONE DAY.

Yes, times have changed since I went to San Cristobal just twenty years ago.  For then the English were pioneers, so to speak; not in a country of savagery, but of semi-savagery, a very different and much worse matter.  I wonder is A.J., the Chief of Police, still to the fore?  Ye gods, how that man tried to break my heart, and how nearly he succeeded!  I was a Mayor-domo then, and G. was my boss, standing in the place of the owners to me.  The boss had a mortal dread of the police and their powers, seen and unseen.  So that when the worthy Chief of Police suddenly decided to add the trade of butchering to his many lucrative businesses, I received orders to sell him cows at twenty-five per cent. less price than I sold to any of his competitors.  Thus, whereas I was selling them at twenty dollars paper, then worth about one pound per head, I had to sell him at fifteen shillings, with the inevitable result that he almost immediately became master of the situation and the entire local market became his, enabling him to charge what he liked for meat, while I was forbidden to raise the price of the cows sold him.

Insatiable in his greed, he began to ask for cattle twice a week, always taking from ten to twenty animals, until one day, after exceptionally wet weather, I protested that it was not possible to round up the stock in the then state of the camp and destroy so much grass for a small bunch of cows.  Unlucky thought and ill-judged protest!  For when he urged that the inhabitants of the town were starving, and that a small point of half-breed heifers would do to go on with, I received orders to let him part out from our best herd.  Twenty fine half-bred Herefords did he pick while I almost shed tears of blood, though all the time, of course, I had to show a smiling face.

This sort of thing had been going on for some time, when one of the boundary riders told me that the fence between the town and one of our nearest paddocks had been cut during the night.

“Then mend it up,” said I.

“Sir, it is mended already.”

Not a week had passed before the same man brought me the same report.  So I determined to “parar rodeo” (round up the cattle) immediately, and count them.  Twenty heifers short in one square league, and in less than a month!  This thing had to stop.  I told the Capataz to take the boundary rider off that beat, without telling him why, and then the Capataz and I patrolled the fence night after night for a week, during which it was never cut.