Nostromo: A Tale of the Seaboard
an explanation. "Of course, it was such a surprise for these boys to find any sort of welcome here. And I suppose they are home-sick. I suppose everybody must be always just a little home-sick."
She was always sorry for home-sick people.
Born in the country, as his father before him, spare and tall, with a flaming mustache, a neat chin, clear blue eyes, auburn hair, and a thin, fresh, red face, Charles Gould looked like a new arrival from over the sea. His grandfather had fought in the cause of independence under Bolivar, in that famous English legion which on the battle-field of Carabobo had been saluted by the great Liberator as saviors of his country. One of Charles Gould's uncles had been the elected President of that very province of Sulaco (then called a state) in the days of Federation, and afterwards had been put up against the wall of a church and shot by the order of the barbarous Unionist general, Guzman Bento. It was the same Guzman Bento who, becoming later on Perpetual President, famed for his ruthless and cruel tyranny, reached his apotheosis in the popular legend of a sanguinary land-haunting spectre whose body had been carried off by the devil in person from the brick mausoleum in the nave of the Church of Assumption in Sta. Marta. Thus, at least, the priests explained its disappearance to the barefooted multitude that streamed in, awe-struck, to gaze at the hole in the side of the ugly box of bricks before the great altar.
Guzman Bento, of cruel memory, had put to death great numbers of people besides Charles Gould's uncle; but with a relative martyred in the cause of aristocracy,
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