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PUBLISHED EVERY SATURDAY BY

THE LIVING AGE COMPANY, BOSTON.

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FOR SIX DOLLARS remitted directly to the Publishers, THE LIVING AGE will be punctually forwarded for a year, free of postage.

Remittances should be made by bank draft or check, or by post-office money order, if possible. If neither of these can be procured, the money should be sent in a registered letter. All postmasters are obliged to register letters when requested to do so. Drafts, checks, and money-orders should be made payable to the order of THE LIVING AGE CO.

Single copies of THE LIVING AGE, 15 cents.

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Thou and thy weird web-footed brethren, sable-featured, tempest toss'd,

Ye are held for souls of pirates, errantdrifting, sentenced, lost,

Nay, poor Petrel, here's a story writ for thee through gentler lore:

Named wert thou, that walk'st the water, from the impetuous saint of yore— Peter who by faith would gladly step with trembling human feet On the Lord's own shining pathway, there his gracious Lord to greet.

Fear not. He whose touch upheld the apostle's life on Galilee,

Gave thy wings, strong and sustaining, O thou wandering bird, to thee! LADY LINDSAY.

THE FAIRY WIFE.

What will I do the long days through that see not you, ma gilli mar?

How shall I bring the heart to sing amid the folk that deathless are?

We loved ten years, and now no tears your fairy wife can find to shed, Ma gilli mar, now you go far on a path her feet can never tread.

Mavrone, mavrone, that I make my moan from a breast like stone, ma gilli mar!

No tears to shed on your golden head, and the lips that laughed and silent are! You chose me out from the fairy rout, you gave me sorrow and hope and fear, And now I lean by your bed and keen, and wish you had given me death, my dear.

What will I do the long days through of years that you know not, machree?

Spirits of such crafty Norsemen as in My fairy birth is crossed with earth, and rapine ruled the main, my kindred's mirth is strange to me.

Shedding blood for very fierceness, lust The laughter wild of my fairy child that

of treasure and of gain,

Now condemned to wander ever, evermore to dip and lave

Black-stained sins, black deeds of old time,

in the crystal-crested wave.

Say, ye wraiths of Viking rovers, grim and

dreaded buccaneers,

Whose vindictive quest of white sails still

across mid-ocean steers, Tracking wreck and bringing wreckagesay, in mystic demon form,

Do ye plan and tread, commanding, every footprint of the storm?

never smiled in her father's face, Pricks through my heart while I walk apart where shadows brood in his sleeping-place.

Why would you give me that must live for weary years, to fade like dew, The gift to know earth's joy and woe, but not to go to the grave with you? Ma gilli mar, your way lies far by never a star that might light my feet, Yet had but I the gift to die, it's the same night that we two would meet.

NORA HOPPER.

IN KEDAR'S TENTS.1

the cause of Queen Christina, and very

BY HENRY SETON MERRIMAN, AUTHOR OF "THE modestly estimating the worth of their

SOWERS."

CHAPTER VII.

IN A MOORISH GARDEN.

"When love is not a blasphemy, it is a religion." There is, perhaps, a subtle significance in the fact that the greatest, the cruelest, the most barbarous civil war of modern days, if not of all time, has owed its outbreak and its long continuance to the influence of a

woman.

When Ferdinand VII. of Spain died in 1833, after a reign broken and disturbed by the passage of that human cyclone, Napoleon the Great, he bequeathed his kingdom, in defiance of the Salic Law, to his daughter Isabella. Ferdinand's brother Carlos, however, claimed the throne, under the very just contention that the Salic Law, by which women were excluded from the heritage of the crown, had never been legally abrogated.

This was the spark that fell in a tinder made up of ambition, unscrupulousness, cruelty, bloodthirstiness, selfseeking, and jealousy-the morale, in a word, of the Spain of sixty years ago. Some sided with the Queen Regent

Christina and rallied round the childqueen, because they saw that that way lay glory and promotion. Others flocked to the standard of Don Carlos, because they were poor and of no influ. ence at court. The Church, as a whole, raised its whispering voice for the Pretender; for the rest, patriotism was nowhere, and ambition on every side. "For five years we have fought the Carlists, hunger, privation, and the politicians at Madrid! And the holy saints only know which has been the worst enemy," said General Vincente to Conyngham, when explaining the

above related details.

And, indeed, the story of this war reads like a romance, for there came

from neutral countries foreign legions, as in the olden days. From England an army of ten thousand mercenaries landed in Spain prepared to fight for

1 Copyright, 1896, by Henry Seton Merriman.

services at the sum of thirteen pence a diem. After all, the value of a man's life is but the price of his daily hire.

"We did not pay them much," said General Vincente, with a deprecating little smile, "but they did not fight much. Their pay was generally in arrears, and they were usually in the rear as well. What will you, my dear a commercial Conyngham; you are people, you keep good soldiers in the shop window, and when a buyer comes you serve him with second-class goods from behind the counter."

He beamed on Conyngham with a pleasant air of benign connivance in a very legitimate commercial transaction.

This is no time or place to go into the history of the English legion in Spain, which, indeed, had quitted that country before Conyngham landed there, horrified by the barbarities of a cruel war, where prisoners received no quarter, and the soldiers on either side were left without pay or rations. In a halfhearted manner England went to the assistance of the queen regent of Spain, and one error in statesmanship led to many. It is always a mistake to strike gently.

"This country," said General Vincente, in his suavest manner, "owes much to yours, my dear Conyngham; but it would have been better for us both had we owed you a little more.”

During the five years prior to Conyngham's arrival at Ronda the war had raged with unabated fury, swaying from the West to East Coast, as for

tune smiled or frowned on the Carlist cause. At one time it almost appeared certain that the Christina forces were unable to stem the rising tide, which bade fair to spread over all Spain, so unfortunate were their generals, so futile the best endeavors of the bravest General and most patient soldiers. Vincente was not alone in his conviction that had the gallant Carlist leader Zumalacarreguy lived, he might have carried all before him. But this great leader at the height of his fame, beloved by all his soldiers, worshipped by

"Do all your countrymen take life thus gaily?" she asked Conyngham one day. "Surely it is a more serious affair than you think it.”

his subordinate officers, died suddenly two great races of noble men and by poison, as it was whispered, the vic- women. tim of jealousy and ambition. Almost at once there arose one in the east of Spain, as obscure in birth as unknown to fame, who flashed suddenly to the zenith of military glory, the brutal, wonderful Cabrera. The name to this day is a household word in Catalonia, while the eyes of a few old men still living, who fought with or against him, flash in the light of other days at the mere mention of it.

Among the many leaders who had attempted in vain to overcome by skill and patriotism the thousand difficulties placed in their way by successive, unstable, insincere ministers of war, General Vincente occupied an honored place. This mild-mannered tactician enjoyed the enviable reputation of being alike inconquerable and incorruptible. His smiling presence on the battlefield was in itself worth half-adozen battalions, while at Madrid the dishonest politicians, who through these years of Spain's great trial systematically bartered their honor for immediate gain, dreaded and respected him.

During the days that followed his arrival at Ronda and release from the prison there, Frederick Conyngham learnt much from his host and little of him, for General Vincente had that in him without which no leader, no great man in any walk of life, can well dispense with an unsoundable depth.

Conyngham learnt also that the human heart is capable of rising at one bound above difficulties of race or custom, creed and spoken language. He walked with Estella in that quiet garden between high walls on the trim Moorish paths, and often the murmur of the running water, which ever graced the Moslem palaces, was the only break upon their silence; for this thing had come into the Englishman's life suddenly, leaving him dazed and uncertain. Estella, on the other hand, had a quiet savoir-faire that sat strangely on her young face. She was only nineteen, and yet had a certain air of authority, handed down to her from

"I have never found it very serious, señorita," he answered. "There is usually a smile in human affairs if one takes the trouble to look for it." "Have you always found it so?" He did not answer at once, pausing to lift the branch of a mimosa-tree that hung in yellow profusion across the pathway.

"Yes, señorita, I think so," he answered at length slowly. There was a sense of eternal restfulness in this old Moorish garden, which acted as a brake on the thoughts, and made conversation halt and drag in an Oriental way that Europeans rarely understand. "And yet you say you remember your father's death?"

"He made a joke to the doctor, señorita, and was not afraid." Estella smiled in a queer way, and then looked grave again.

"And you have always been poor, you say sometimes almost starving?" "Yes; always poor, deadly poor, señorita," answered Conyngham with a gay laugh. "And since I have been on my own resources frequently, well

very hungry! The appetite has been large and the resources have been small. But when I get into the Spanish army, they will, no doubt, make me a general, and all will be well."

He laughed again and slipped his hand into his jacket pocket.

"See here," he said; "your father's recommendation to General Espartero in a confidential letter."

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greatest names are those that men of an illness of which he ignored the have made for themselves. Conyng- existence, señorita; in three days a ham replaced the two letters in his man's life may be made miserable or pocket, and almost immediately happy-perhaps in three minutes." asked:

"Do you know any one called Barenna in Ronda, señorita?" thereby proving that General Espartero would do ill to give him an appointment requiring even the earliest rudiments of diplomacy.

"Julia Barenna is my cousin. Her mother was my mother's sister. Do you know them, Señor Conyngham?"

"Oh, no," answered Conyngham, truthfully enough. "I met a man who knows them. Do they live in Ronda?" "No; their house is on the Cordova road, about half a league from the Customs Station."

Estella was not by nature curious, and asked no questions. There were many who knew the Barennas that would fain have been able to claim acquaintance with General Vincente and his daughter, but could not do so, for the captain-general moved in a circle not far removed from the queen regent herself, and mixed but little in the society of Ronda, where for the time being he held a command.

And she looked straight in front of her in order to avoid his eyes.

"Yours will always be happy, I think," she said, "because you never seem to go below the surface, and on the surface life is happy enough."

He made some light answer, and they walked on beneath the orangetrees, talking of these and other matters, which lose all meaning when set down on paper, indulging in those dangerous generalities which sound SO safe, and in reality narrow down to a little world of two.

They were thus engaged when the servant came to announce that the horse, which the general had placed at Conyngham's disposal, was at the door in accordance with the Englishman's own order. He went away sorrowfully enough, only half consoled by the information that Estella was about to attend a service at the Church of Santa Maria, and could not have stayed longer in the garden.

The hour of the siesta was scarce over, and as Conyngham rode through the cleanly streets of the ancient town more than one roused himself from the shadow of a doorway to see him pass. There are few older towns in Andalusia than Ronda, and scarce anywhere the habits of the Moors are so closely followed. The streets are clean, the houses whitewashed within and withquite another from that in which Es- out. The trappings of the mules and tella moved at Ronda.

Conyngham required no further information, and in a few moments dismissed the letter from his mind. Events seemed for him to have moved rapidly within the last few days, and the world of roadside inns and casual acquaintance, into which he had stepped on his arrival in Spain, was

"I must set out for Madrid in a few days at the latest," he said, a few minutes afterward; "but I shall go against my will, because you tell me that you and your father will not be coming North until the spring."

Estella shook her head with a little laugh. This man was different from the punctilious aides-de-camp and others who had hitherto begged most respectfully to notify their admiration. "And three days ago you did not know of our existence," she said. "In three days a man may be dead

much of the costume of the people are Oriental in texture and brilliancy.

Conyngham asked a passer-by to indicate the way to the Cordova road, and the polite Spaniard turned and walked by his stirrup until a mistake was no longer possible.

"It is not the most beautiful approach to Ronda," said this garrulous person, "but well enough in the summer, when the flowers are in bloom and the vineyards green. The road is straight and dusty until one arrives at the possession of the Señora Barenna, a light road to the right leading up into

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