The sun was going down upon the ridge of the mountain above Majente on a fine evening in July, when my honoured master Don Francisco de Almorin, and his valet Tomaso, came in sight of the ferry across the Jucar. There had been some reports of robbers among the hills, and they stopped to see what a crowd was made of, that had gathered on the river's side. They might have saved themselves the delay, for the crowd was nothing worse than the peasantry of the neighbourhood looking on the ferry-boat, which was upset and lying on a little island in the midst of the stream. The next day was to be the fair of Valencia, and heaps of partridges, hams, eggs, and cheeses, lay on the bank, waiting till the flood should pass away. The outcries of the peasants came up to the travellers' ears like the clamour of robbers, and the peasants them selves were still more puzzled by the travellers, who had in their hurry mistaken the road, and were riding within an inch of the precipice.-"Nothing human ever galloped so fast," was one observation of the crowd; 66 nothing human could ever gallop there at all, was another. The best hunter for twenty miles round acknowledged, that he would as soon break his neck at once as follow bird or goat there; and the priest, taking out his breviary, began the "Exhortation against dealing with the devil." The horsemen had by this time got over the rocks, and plunging into the valley, disappeared. Whatever differences of opinion there might have been as to their appearance, there could be none as to their vanishing. The Alcalde, a man of great gravity, and few words as became him, withdrawing the priest a step or two from the crowd, and holding council with him, returned, and declared, that what they had seen was an undoubted apparition, and that they might expect to hear great news, probably of a battle in Portugal. The priest went round, giving his benediction to the merchandise, and the crowd repeated their Ave Marias with much fervency. Some had seen the spectres disappear in a flash of lightning, others could swear that the hollow in the rock, where they plun

VOL. XI.

ged, had grown visibly larger; and one, a pale youth, with a hectic cheek and a sunken eye, who had written the last Christmas carol, and was in fact the village poet, silently followed with a burning glance and an outstretched hand the motion of a small grey cloud that rose from behind the hill, and grew into gold and purple as it met the sun. He afterwards wrote some lines upon it, saying that he had seen the spirits going up in a chariot of fire, and they were often sung afterwards through the country. But a sudden turn of the road let out the horsemen at once, galloping down with whip and spur to the river's side. Then came such a scene of confusion as it would take Lope to describe: Peasants rolling over peasants; the Alcalde in full flight; the priest on his knees, calling on every saint together; and more boar-hams, sheep-cheeses, partridges, and eggs, driven into the stream by the general rush, than I suppose ever floated down a Valencian river before.

The cavaliers were at length recognized to be flesh and blood. The Alcalde gathered his gown round him, and retreated in anger beyond the rabble. The priest put up his breviary in some confusion, and the rabble roared with laughter, and clamoured for news of the heretics and the last battle. The poet, after gazing on the noble figure and handsome countenance of the Don, pointed out the upturned boat, and offered him a bed in the village till the flood should go down. "It is impossible, my friend," said the cavalier, "I must pass the river to-night, for to-night I must be in Valencia. Is there no other boat?"

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"No," was the answer; that was the only one known within memory; the villagers were attached to it; it was probable that they never would have another."-"Is there no ford?"— "None for forty miles."-"Then stand out of my way; farewell." Don Francisco struck in the spur, and with a motion of his hand to his servant to follow, darted forwards amid an outcry of terror from the crowd. The flood was high, and had swelled higher within the last few minutes. It now came down, roaring and dashing sheets of foam upon the shore. The horse

3 E

stooped his nostrils to the water's edge, started back, plunged, and wheeled round. Tomaso looked the picture of reluctance. "Stay where you are, sir," said Don Francisco; take care of the horses, and follow me when this pestilent river goes down. This is my birth-night-If I do not appear at home, it will be taken for granted that a hundred foolish things have happened to me. Leave the beach clear!" The next instant he sprang off his horse, threw the bridle on the valet's arm, and was rolling away in the wa

ters.

The Don was a bold swimmer, and had once, under the evil spirit of champaigne and a wager, swum with an Englishman from Port St Mary's to the Fishmarket gate at Cadiz, after supper. The Englishman was drowned, and the Spaniard won his wager, and a fever, which sent him to mountain air and the Biscay physicians for six months. Having dared the ocean, he, I suppose, thought he might defy a river; and at his first plunge he rose so far in the stream, that the peasants raised a general shout of admiration. Yet the river was strong, and to reach the opposite side was the matter in dispute between it and the Don. But the river was on its own ground, and, of course, soon had the advantage. The waves seemed to tumble over each other, as if to reach the very spot where the swimmer was whirling round and round like a cork. The admiration of the peasants grew silent; a huge billow, high as the Alcalde's house, and white as all the pigeons that ever covered it, came down thun dering and flashing, till every soul left his wares, and ran up the beach. The mill-dam had burst, and on looking back, there was nothing to be seen but sheet on sheet of foam, rolling baskets here and there, a borrico snorting and struggling down the torrent, and fragments of mill-spokes, tables, and threelegged stools, which the miller's family had abandoned as ransom for their lives. After much gazing, a cap was seen whirled on the shore, which Tomaso recognized as his master's, and which, with many tears, he put up, declaring that he should preserve it for the old Countess, who would think no reward too high for a relic of her departed son. Night fell rapidly, and the crowd retired, telling stories the whole way of the floods that pre

saged the plague, and the arrival of the Moors.

Don Francisco had reached the shore. The bursting of the mill-dam had probably saved his life, for in his last struggle with the eddy, it broke the current, in which he would infallibly have gone whirling to the ocean, dead or alive, and dashed him on the bank, some miles down the ford.

For the first few minutes he was totally insensible to his escape. He had felt the rush of the waters over him; his ears had been filled with a roar, and his eyes covered with a darkness, till all passed away. His first sensation on the bank was that of being able to struggle, and he flung his arms round him on the billows of a bed of the thickest thistles that ever grew under a Spanish sun. With eyes still closed against the waters, and ears filled with their horrible hissing, he was at last convinced that he had changed his element, and with hands and limbs stung by a million of thorns, he sprang on his feet. The night had fallen, and the sky sparkled through the branches of the wilderness. But neither cottage lights, stray peasants, nor wood-tracks, would come for his calling. The thought of the tertulla in his family mansion came into his mind. He thought of the boleras and the quadrilles, the music and the supper; and himself, the honour and hope of all, shivering in wet clothes in the open air, thinking of robbers and wolves, with a wilderness on one side, and on the other nothing but a confounded river, that had nearly sent him down for food to the Mediterranean lobsters. A new dash of foam from a passing wave drove him back into the wood, and by the help of a star, that twinkled like a diamond, to guide him over and about the trunks of endless oaks, poplars, and elms, some fallen, some bending to their fall, and others clustered like pillars of a cathedral, he felt his way onwards. After an hour or two of tumbling, struggling, and execrations at the folly of having ever learned to swim, the light, not too good at best, darkened suddenly, and he found himself under a wall. He now called out loudly, but no one answered. He might as well have spoken to the trees, among which he now appeared likely to pass the night. At length, in creeping round the wall, he caught the glimpse of a

lamp through a crevice, and before he could cry out again, a young female glided from an inner door, and took her seat under the lamp, which hung in a kind of rude summer-pavilion. Here he began to think of an adventure. The female might be handsome or not, for her back was turned to him. But to raise his voice would have probably made matters worse, and not to put her to flight became the grand object. Yet, to see her, in his present position, was impossible; the crevice was the narrowest slit that was ever made in a stone wall; to widen it was desperate, for the stones were masses large enough for the foundation of the rock of Gibraltar. The Don, catholic as he was, was once or twice on the point of wishing for the aid of the cloven-footed architect, who had built the bridge of Saragossa in one night, and carried it away in another. The figure of the female was delicate, and some notes of her voice, borne towards him by the echo of the pavilion, pleased him still more. At that moment, he could have sworn by the Santa Casa, that she had eyes as jetty as the locks that hung over them shining in the lamp, rosy lips, carnation cheeks, and teeth that made all the pearls of the earth black in the comparison. The wall was broken into many hollows and corners, like those of the old Moorish buildings, and after a short search, he found a recess which placed him on the opposite side of the garden. A withered vine was his ladder, and he mounted to the top of the wall. The female was young, but she shewed neither the eyes of jet, nor the cheeks of carnation; her head was leant upon a thin white hand, and she was looking intently on a piece of embroidery which lay on her knee. In a few moments she took it up, and began to work at it; but she seemed to be thinking of other things, for, after an effort or two, she sighed deeply, and dropped it once more upon her knee. Then her low, broken song was begun again, and he heard these words, in a very sweet voice :

"The grave is but a calmer bed

Where mortals sleep a longer sleep; A shelter for the houseless head,

A spot where wretches cease to weep." The voice would then sink into a murmur, and after a sigh or two, and

a tear hastily swept from the eye, begin again, "The grave is but a calmer bed," and so on. There was not much in this, but the voice was touching, and even the raising of her hand to her head was so full of a pretty tenderness, that the Don began to imagine himself in love.

This was a matter of the greatest astonishment to him. He had been a bold gallant, if the Valencia Diario de los Amores was to be believed; but the order to join his regiment before it moved to the Portuguese frontier, had found him able to take leave of the walls of his own native town, and look back towards it from every hill up to Elvas, without more than remembering that there dwelt the lips of the Lady Isadora de Alcazar, or the still more renowned eyes of the Lady Maria de Dolores. How he had escaped from beauties covered with jewels, and tempting him with still brighter glances, to hang upon a wall in a forest, where probably more than one wolf was waiting for his coming down, and all this to look upon a country girl of seventeen, made him feel excessively astonished. He began to think that he was doing something foolish, and was preparing to descend, when the voice murmured through the thicket, and he heard the words, "The grave is but a calmer sleep,' for the tenth time, but the sound seemed sweeter than ever. His turning round shook the vines, the singer gave a startled look upwards, and he saw a face of great beauty; a pale forehead, from which locks as black as ebony had been shaken back by her looking up; a cheek, flushed with surprise, and a pair of eyes that, under the lamp, sparkled like a pair of large diamonds. Don Francisco in another step would have crossed the wall, when a musket was fired from behind; the bullet dashed the stone into shivers round his head, his hold gave way, and he found himself buried to the neck in lime, bricks, and bramble bushes. On his winding himself out of this pit, he determined to try the wall again, declare his rank, and make the unknown beauty an offer of the whole Almorin Palace, with all therein. But the lamp had been put out, the arbour was deserted, he could not hear so much as the rustle of a bird; all had disappeared like the money of a fairy tale ; and in