But
any company would have been preferable to the doctor's, at whom he had
always looked askance as a sort of beachcomber of superior intelligence
partly reclaimed from his abased state. That feeling led him to ask--
"What has that ruffian done with the other two?"
"The chief engineer he would have let go in any case," said the doctor.
"He wouldn't like to have a quarrel with the railway upon his hands.
Not just yet, at any rate. I don't think, Captain Mitchell, that you
understand exactly what Sotillo's position is--"
"I don't see why I should bother my head about it," snarled Captain
Mitchell.
"No," assented the doctor, with the same grim composure. "I don't see
why you should. It wouldn't help a single human being in the world if
you thought ever so hard upon any subject whatever."
"No," said Captain Mitchell, simply, and with evident depression. "A man
locked up in a confounded dark hole is not much use to anybody."
"As to old Viola," the doctor continued, as though he had not heard,
"Sotillo released him for the same reason he is presently going to
release you.
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