“After I had been five years in the States papa sent for me to meet him in Colon. I got off the steamer, and he was waiting on the wharf. I knew he would do it just that way. He put on his glasses with both hands and looked at me as if he were very glad, and oh! I loved it, for it was just like it was when I was a little girl and ran into the big room. “But trouble came in Panama, and papa thought we’d better come up to San Francisco. ‘I’ve been so busy down here one way and another,’ he said, ‘that I’m always suspected of conspiracy. Your mother is dead, and the fun of life is out of it. We will live peaceably as befits an old man and his daughter.’” Vincent’s voice broke in on her story. “When was this?” “Five years ago. And everything went all right till we got to Amapala. There a friend of papa’s came on board and showed me a paper. It said papa was not to be allowed to land in Honduras, as he was plotting an insurrection. He put on his glasses to read it. When he looked up at me, he said: ‘We shan’t see where your mother is buried, nor the place where you were born.’ He shook hands with the friend, and said nothing more. “On the day we were at Ocos, in the afternoon, I saw the _comandante_ come on the steamer with some soldiers. He said he wanted to arrest papa, but that if papa came along willingly he would not use force. “‘I am under the American flag,’ papa said. ‘I know who has done this. It would mean my death if I went with you.’ Suddenly I heard a shot and then another. I hurried to papa’s room. Outside there were two soldiers aiming into it. I saw papa sitting on his camp-stool and his two revolvers were in his lap. He was hunting for his glasses, but the chain had slipped down. He could not see to shoot. One of the soldiers, after a long time, fired his gun again, and father suddenly picked up his revolvers, and I cried out again. He didn’t shoot, and I know now that he was afraid of hitting me. Then he fell. The soldiers fired again and ran away, panting and yelling to each other. I went in to papa, and he asked for his glasses, sitting up on the floor very weakly. When I found them and gave them to him, the blood was running very fast down his breast. He put on his glasses with both hands, wrinkling up his forehead in the old way, and looked at me very----He looked.... He said, ‘I am glad I could see you, little one ... before I go.’ That was all.” She went to the window and stayed there, immobile, while Vincent walked up and down behind her. At last she turned around. “That was five years ago. No one has done anything to punish them.”