its gray, windowless walls, as stern and unattractive as the men who had formerly inhabited it. The old square bell-tower, however, looked cheerful enough, for it was gleaming in the light of the morning sun, and the tri-colored flag of the republic (yellow, blue and red,) was waving gaily from its summit. Passing through the large gate into the spacious court-yard filled with soldiers, and glancing up at the double tiers of galleries where the officers were chatting and smoking or looking listlessly down in the yard below, he entered the chapel-room, where he found the commander-in-chief. Ribas rose to welcome him, and the officers clustered around with renewed congratulations upon his recovery. While he was conversing and looking up at the skylight overhead, and thinking of the old dusty organ against which were piled unpeaceful spears and muskets and gaudy banners, he saw Ribas start up suddenly, and at the same moment several officers uttered the word 'Lepero!' Harold turned around and saw a man just entering the hall whose appearance was more dreaded by the Spaniards than the pestilence-a leper! On he came, his long ragged garments trailing in the dust, while his bare ghastly arms issued from the dark drapery that was wrapped around his breast, and the deadly white face gleamed amid his black tangled elf locks with a sepulchral hideousness as appalling as if a sheeted corpse had risen from its mouldering bed and moved among the living. A leper! On he came, and as he approached the table the pale lips opened, a sickly smile passed over the face, and Ribas and Harold saw with a shudder that the keen black eyes of the Half-breed were twinkling in the spectral orbits of the hideous apparition.

'Calpang!'

'Si, Excelencia; I knew that I would surprise you. You thought I was a lepero. Well, if Boves had not thought so-gheck! (snapping his fingers with a gesture as if his head had been struck off.) We Llaneros know many things, and to counterfeit the leprosy is not the most difficult. A few days will get this poison from my skin; but I forget-Urica!' and the leprous hand came down emphatically upon the table; Urica!- to-morrow five hundred march against the village, and if you do not protect it

Maturin,' replied the lepero, looking down at his white hand, is safe; I know that from what I have heard.'

'And what was that?' said Harold.

--

That was ah! Colonel, I am happy to see you once more among us,' raising his keen eyes and fixing them upon him-' that was, they are to attack Urica; that is, about five hundred.'

'Are to remain where they are for the present. Of course our

general will send a sufficient force to capture or defeat the detachment.'

'Of course-cierto,' replied Ribas.

Might I ask to assist in this expedition?' said Harold.

'If you think you can bear the fatigue.'

You may rely upon that, so let me bid you good-day. My arrangements will soon be completed.'

Harold, happy in having found an excuse for parting with his kind friends, hastened to the house of the good Blas. He found Adelaida sitting pensively alone in the verandah.

'Adelaida, I have come to bid you farewell.'

'Farewell?'

'Yes, for a time. I do not know how to express my thanks for the kindness you have shown me. I once had a dear sister-you have awakened in my heart a feeling that- Adelaida,' said he, taking her small hand in both his own, Adelaida, to-day I must leave you, and'-(oh! how the thoughts struggled tumultuously in his bosom! It was not love, but a tender emotion nearly akin to it, which language could not express) - Adelaida'-as he repeated her name for the third time, he felt the hand he held in his own tremble; her head sank back against the butaca, and he saw that her face had turned as white as marble she had fainted!

In a moment the old house-keeper answered his call for assistance, and the usual remedies restored the fair Creole to consciousness; but the tears rained from her long silken lashes, and taking his hand, as if to bid him farewell, she raised her eyes and looked up in his face. There was no mistaking that expression; he felt in the depths of his soul for the first time that he was beloved!

The trumpets sounding up the street reminded him that he had but a few minutes to spare; so raising the hand she had placed in his own to his lips, he said once more, Farewell!' and taking his weapons from the top of the sideboard, he left the hospitable house of Blas Elisondo with a heavy heart.

It was late at night when the detachment under the command of General Bermudes reached Urica, a little village situated upon the banks of a clear stream that, winding its way through the plains, shone peacefully in the light of the full moon. So, after setting the sentries and making preparations for the next day, the soldiers lapsed into slumber and awaited the morning. But morning came, and noon, and nearly night, before they saw any thing of the enemy. At last the word passed from lip to lip, They are coming!' The cavalry under Bermudes were soon in the saddle, and Harold unsheathed the sword of Eric with a thrill of pleasure.

There was a wood on one side of the village, and the horsemen were stationed in the broad path that was cut through the centre of it, while a feint of resistance appeared in front of the village in the shape of branches and rude breast-works of earth, which ha been thrown up during the day. Artillery they had none; that was an arm of defence but little known out of the larger cities of Venezuela.

'Look!' said Ayucl.a, who was beside Harold in the wood; 'there are more than five hundred in that body coming toward us. Ah! the half-breed will make my word good this day!'

But our force is still larger than that.'

We shall see-we shall see. How dark it is growing! -- there

will be rain soon;' for heavy clouds rolling up in dense masses in the west spread a gloom over the vast plains.

Meantime the enemy were approaching, and they could make out that they were almost all on foot; and now a flash of light from the deepening west and a heavy clap of thunder. Involuntarily every man grasped his arms, as if the electric fluid had nerved him for the conflict.

They have halted,' said Ayucha; now is the time!'

Another flash of light and peal of thunder.

Forward!' said Bermudes, and the troop of cavalry poured out of the wood like a spring stream that had swept away its barriers. On, on, on-over the shallow river and over the plain, with the speed of winged falcons and the thunder of countless hoofs, with the clash of arms, and shouts, and the waving of numberless spears and swords. On, on, on—wild with the terrible excitement that is only to be assuaged with human blood! On, on, on-it is for liberty! How many lips that were now shouting Viva la patria!' would shout when the next hour dawned upon the world? On, on, on! Again there came a bright glare of light.

My God!' said Harold to Ayucha, did you see that?'

What?'

There is a large body of horsemen coming from the West! That last flash revealed them.'

'I thought no less. Ah, Calpang, my words have come true when it is too late.'

It was indeed too late, for in the next moment the air was rent with the discharge of musketry from the enemy, and the horses of Bermudes were trampling down the foremost ranks who had given way with the impetuous charge of the patriots. And Harold, his brain whirling with excitement, his horse plunging and rearing among the falling men, while his long sabre and powerful arm rose and fell with death in every blow, soon found himself separated from Ayucha, and in the centre of a group of wretches, as a wild fierce shout from behind told him that the horsemen of Boves had come up and were acting in the terrible drama. But did his stout heart quail? Not an instant- turning his good horse toward the sound, he had hewn a way through the fierce crowd and uplifted weapons around him, if his horse had not stumbled over one of the dead bodies and thrown him. In an instant a dozen flushed and angry faces glared over him, his sword was wrested from his hand, and he saw a ruffian with a malignant smile raise it over his head to despatch him, when a powerful arm arrested the blow and an uncouth voice said, ' Prisoner.' Whoever the spokesman was he seemed to have some authority, for they obeyed his orders and bound Harold as he lay upon the ground.

I know you; you know me,' said the man who had saved his life.

There was something familiar in the voice, but the features were so hidden with beard and moustache and smutched with blood, that he could not recognise the face.

'You know me,' repeated the man, 'Look, see dis!' and he raised his left hand the thumb was gone, and Harold knew that the man who stood over him was Schlauff. He was the prisoner of the Westphalian.

Meanwhile Ayucha, armed with his machete, which broad and heavy like a short Roman sword, was painted red with the blood of the miscreants, had endeavored to cut his way to his friend; but the patriots assailed on every side, astounded with the unexpected attack of the horsemen of Boves, and broken and dismayed, were flying over the plain, and reluctantly he too was obliged to turn and fly with the rest. And now the great rain came pouring down with impetuous fury, and the lightning gleamed over the waste, revealing glimpses of the pursuing and the pursued; of flying and conflicting groups; of fallen men, and riderless horses with streaming manes and tails, running wildly in every direction. But Ayucha heard the sound of the river which lay between him and Urica, and his horse, slipping and stumbling on the wet grass, still bore him onward, solitary, but still from the foe; and now he gains the brink of the stream, that swollen into a torrent chafes through a rocky bed, its white foaming surface contrasting with the black ravine through which it was tumbling and roaring, while now and then the body of a man whirled past him, or a swimming horse, struggling and striving in vain to get a foothold. So, riding beside its brink to find

a crossing place, he heard the shouts far away on his right in the direction of the defenceless village, and saw the clouds lift in the west, and a narrow strip of red light girdling the horizon. Suddenly the trampling of a horse alarmed him, and looking around he saw that a single horseman with a long spear, was close behind him. He felt for his machete; it was gone; but his horse sprang forward with the blow of the spur, and he unfastened the bow which until then he had not used. In an instant an arrow was notched in the string the bow drawn-released! and the spearman fell from his saddle, was dragged along the ground, and then thrown senseless upon the plain.

Who said Ayucha, as the fallen man opened his eyes and glared wildly around him.

air.

'Save my life! you will be richly rewarded.'

Who? your name?' said Ayucha, with the spear uplifted in the

'Boves! a thousand doubloons

'Save you?' said Ayucha with a wild laugh that rang into the clear air. You and down came the keen blade, through breast, and heart, and back, and deep, deep into the ground that was beneath him.

The storm that visited Maturin that evening, was but the precursor of another which swept over the city the next day, and left its traces upon bloody thresholds, and streets heaped with the dead, and the blackened rafters of desolate houses; a storm of fire and steel, more terrible in its effects than the ancient passover; a storm of men flushed with victory at Urica, and infuriated with the loss of

their leader: a storm that broke the limbs and snapped the sinews of patriotism, and cast it prostrate, apparently never to rise again.

And Harold, who had fearlessly looked at death, as he stood there a bound and unwilling spectator, felt his stout heart give way when he thought of the brave Ribas, and the kind-hearted Padre, and the good Blas, and, oh, misery! misery! gentle, innocent Adelaida, with all her youth and beauty, exposed, defenceless, and in the power of those merciless ruffians. As the scanty train of captives passed through the familiar street toward the convent of the Dominicans, soon to be their prison, Harold saw with surprise that while the neighboring houses were filled with the wild soldiery, the house of Blas Elisonda stood untouched. There was a feeling of relief in the sight; and then he heard too that Ribas had escaped. But that afternoon, while standing in the court-yard of the convent, now filled with prisoners and surrounded by a hostile guard, he heard shouts in the plaza, and the trampling of horses. Ribas! Ribas! muera Ribas!" (death to Ribas) was the cry: the wide gate opened; he saw his brave commander enter, wounded and in irons; then he was thrust into a narrow cell, and Harold heard one of his companions whisper:

'Bolt and shackle-bolt and shackle, and a platoon of musketry! That is his fate, and your's, and mine.'

around, around,

The snow is on the frozen ground,
River and rill are frore and still,

The warm sun lies on the cold side-hill;

And the giant trees in the forest sound

As their ice-clasped arms wave to and fro,

And they shiver their gyves with a stalwart blow.'

THE widower sat by the stove, smoothing the rusty crape which was sewed on his dilapidated hat with blue thread in stitches an inch apart, and as he twisted it round beneath his thumb and fore-finger, he looked mournfully out at the pump that stood with a crown of snow on one side of its head and a beard of icicles, like a one-armed Lear in front of the window of the Susquehanna hotel.

'Bates?' said he.

'Well, Tot.'

The little man looked down at his bombazine waistcoat; there was a cloth patch over each pocket; it was decent, however; a mark of respect to the departed, so he raised up his head again with a feeling of pride.

Bates?'

'Well, Tot; that 's four times you've begun and you hain't no furder yet.'

Waal,' said Mr. Tippin, crossing one leg over the other, putting his ruined hat over his right eye, and looking at the red face of the sergeant with the other: Waal, ever since I lost my Betsy I kinder feel lost myself; things aint as they useter be; I can't work, Bates.