tern to bed in her own room. The fair xr had <

-If to sleep, hut the dark one. the biggest, had not, Hosed her eyes yet. She sat up in bed clutching the Wieets right up under her chin ami staring before her like a little witch. Leonarda did not approve of the i children being admitted to the house. She made tln^ feeling clear by the indifferent tone in which she imjuirel whether their mother was dead yet. to the seflora, she must be asleep. Kver since she had gone into her room after seeing the departure of Dofia nia with her dying father, there had been no sound behind her door. The doctor, rousing himself out of profound reflec- told her abruptly to call her mistress at once. lobbied off to wait for Mrs. Gould in the sala. He was very tired, but too excited to sit down. In this great drawing-room, now empty, in which his withered soul had been refreshed after many arid years and his Hfcftcast spirit had accepted silently the toleration of many side glances, he wandered hap-hazard among the chairs and table, still Mrs Gould, enveloped in a morning wrapper, came in rapidly. " You know that I never approved of the silver being away," the doctor began at once, as a preliminary to the narrative of his night's adventures in association with Captain Mitchell, the engineer-in-chief, and old Viola at Sotillo's headquarters. To the doctor, with ial conception of this political crisis, the re- moval of the silver had seemed an irrational and ill- ned measure. It was as if a general were sending !est part of his troops away on the eve of battle

u some recondite pretext. The whole lot of in-