She opened his coat and crept inside, close against his strong, true heart, which kept knock-knocking so loudly for her sake. Ramon took away the Gloire de Dijon rose, long since faded and torn, and kissed her white throat, still perfumed by its dying breath. She twined her fingers in the tangles of his silky hair, and patted and fondled his cheek, once so ruddy with joy and health, now so wan with love and despair; while he gathered her, every inch of her, down to her sad, tired little feet, up into his lap, and pressed her against the breast where he knew she would lie no more.

At last he spoke.

"Janet, we must go; the storm's coming on, and you'll die of cold and exposure. If I loose my arms, have you strength to leave me, to mount your own horse and ride away? I can't put you away from me, my darling, but I can open my arms and let you go."

"I can go."

"Then listen. I can't ride with you now. If I were beside you, I should surely try to bring you back. For a time I'll keep behind you, but in sight; then after a while I'll come up and ride with you. Keep on the beach. Go as fast as you can, and don't turn aside for anything; then when you see the Santa Barbara lights, I want you to stop and let me kiss you once more. Will you ?" "Yes."

"God bless you, my darling. Now go." One long, straining embrace, one kiss, hotter, harder, longer than the rest; then Ramon opened his arms. She lay still one moment gaining strength and courage to leave him; then rose with tottering steps, mounted her mustang, and turned his face homeward. She looked back and saw Ramon just mounting. And thus, a couple of hundred yards apart, they flew on in the storm and gathering gloom.

A still greater change had come over the scene-the tide had turned and the sea was up; a black and angry ocean took the place of the sparkling waters of six hours ago, and instead of the frolicsome white caps were breakers mountains high.

The fog grew thicker and yet more thick; now and then a dash of fierce and bitter rain was hurled to earth and

"Wildly raved around

The winds, like spirits lost."

For several miles they rode on thus; then, as the rising tide crowded her against the cliff, among great boulders and heaps of slippery seaweed, Ramon pushed up beside Janet, and lent her a helping hand. There is one place on this long stretch of beach where at full high tide the waves dash directly on the face of the cliff; at such time impassable to wheels, but in calm weather easily forded by horse and rider.

This they reached half an hour before flood-tide, but already the tumult out at sea had driven in the water; already it was roaring and thundering against the cliff. It was now dusk, but through the gathering darkness they could see great fragments of rock half engulfed by waves, and huge pieces of driftwood hurling themselves against the precipice, only to be flung back into the raging waves. And through this boiling, eddying torrent lay their path.

"We must go on," said Ramon; "we can't mount the cliffs without going two miles back; and the tide's so high it would be all over the beach before we could get there. When we have passed this point there's a road we can take just beyond. Then we'll be high and dry, and all safe, my darling-don't be frightened !"

"I'm not afraid," said Janet; "I don't care."

Her words tortured him, and he threw out his hand imploringly.

"Oh, don't say that, Janet! You must live to be a joy to me! I can see you sometimes, you know."

66

Yes, that's true; I had forgotten. I don't want to die, Allen; we can see each other, and while there's life there's hope, you know."

She smiled bravely up at him through the spray which hung in beads upon her lashes, and the tears that coursed down her pallid cheeks.

Ramon went round to the seaward side, in between her and the frantic waves-between her and the hurrying sticks of driftwood. The wind had risen still higher; and around this bleak corner howls and shrieks and demoncries filled the air.

"Guide your horse inside that great rock, Janet," he shouted. "There-where there's a quiet pool! Keep close to the cliffs, and when he begins to swim give him a loose rein. Now!"

He whipped Janet's horse, put spurs to his own, and side by side they made a dash for the water; then in a moment Don Diavolo and Leon were swimming neck and neck, Ramon holding Janet's reins, and dragging her pony after his own more powerful horse.

There was an instant lull, a sudden silence, and the waves swept out and away, leaving the horses knee-deep in water. High up above their heads once more they heard the eagle scream; far out at sea was a strange whispering, a threatening murmur beginning to deepen into a roar. For an instant the fog lifted; once more they looked into each other's faces, and heard each other's voices. Janet turned her sweet, quiet face toward Ramon and looked at him with eyes from which coming death could not fright the tenderness.

"Dear Allen," she said, "I love you so !"

And she put up one hand, and once more caressed his cheek and curly hair.

Ramon gave her one glance full of anguish and love, then pointed out to sea.

"Forgive me, my darling, for bringing you here," he said.

Then with a flash of triumphant joy, which not even remorse could smother:

"We won't have to part now-never again."

Then as the giant wave he had seen and heard came towering in, overwhelming horse and rider, he caught his sweetheart to his breast, and before death- took them, snatched one more kiss from her sweet, answering lips. Then a broken spar, riding wild as the Volkure, flung them against the precipice, and—all was over.

The next morning some followers of Chavez, the bandit and outlaw, who had ventured under cover of the storm into the neighborhood of Ortega Hill, found Janet and Ramon wound in each other's arms, and softly sleeping.

They stripped them of watches, rings, purses, and took the revolver from Ramon's side, but when they would have taken his clothes also, found they could not separate him from the girl he held so closely clasped in his arms. So they left them there, and later in the day a party of Spaniards found and brought them into Santa Barbara, and there, because they could not be separated, Janet and Ramon were laid in one coffin and one grave. They now lie under the live oaks on that sunny slope of the cemetery which looks across the race-track, over the mountains and town. Some of their warm-hearted California friends have planted vines and flowers over their grave, and beneath this lovely coverlet God has given them a sleep both long and sweet.

to my mind's eye the valorous Gazul and the incomparable Lindajara; the brave Abencerrages; the proud Abenamar and the beautiful Galiana; and the ingrate Zayda, the most cruel of Moorish beauties, whose stony heart was not to be moved even by such a love verse as

Granada is a city of running waters. The Genil-the Singilis of the Romans, the Shingil of the Moors-flows down from the Sierra Nevada. The Darro approaches Granada under the Monte Sacro. The gorge through which it rushes was the Haxariz, the "Garden of Recreation" of the Moors. Gold was formerly found in its bed, and on the occasion of my visit, I spent a "long hour by Shrewsbury clock" indolently watching the movements of a seeker of gold-a woman, who, nuda genu, naked even higher than the knee, amphibiously toiled amid the boulders over which the coffee-hued waters swished so merrily, for—

"Gold! gold! gold! gold!

Bright and yellow, hard and cold."

The Moorish name of the city was Karnattah, "The Pomegranate," and the threat of the Spanish King, Ferdinand, that he would pluck the pomegranate leaf and flower to pieces was fulfilled when Boabdil, the last of the Moorish monarchs, was driven out of the beautiful city. I stood upon the height overlooking Granada where Boabdil, heart-broken, gazed at the exquisite pomegranate that lay beneath him, gazed until compelled to fly, and that spot is called unto the present hour El ultimo Sospiro del Moro, or "The last Sigh of the Moor."

Fain would I linger in the quaint and picturesque streets of Granada, whose architecture is at once the delight and the terror of modern "builders of houses." Fain would I mingle with the caravans of the peasants of the Vega, whose donkeys are hidden beneath the piles of wondrous - looking fruits, veritable clots of color. Fain would I dispose of my reales to nut-brown gypsies in exchange for a peep into futurity through the medium of the line of life across my hand. Fain would I tarry to listen to the strange chants and songs of hideous dwarfs, as they droned their love-ditties to the thrumming of quaint guitars or the inspiriting click, click of the castanets. Fain would I "operate" in flirtations with senoritas half hidden in balconies behind yellow blinds striped blood-red, whose dark eyes spoke Andalusia and all the passionate possibilities which that word conveys; but it is of the Alhambra that I mean to discourse, and I can but sum up Granada in the words of the Spanish poet :

"Quien no ha visto á Granada,

No ha visto á nada❞—

"Who has not beheld Granada has seen nothing." Take this to heart, ye dwellers in New York and Boston.

IIL, about 1314. The greatest decorator of the Alhambra was Yusuf I., who, although a sorry warrior, was very suc cessful in the arts of peace. He was enormously rich. He regilt and repainted the palace, which then must have been a thing of the "Tales of the Genii." Under the Castilian Conquest, whitewash was the order of the day, and, horrible, to relate, the Moslem symbols were all completely obliterated by this harmless necessary pigment. What Ferdinand and Isabella began, their grandson, Charles V., carried out; and this Vandal, not content with whitewash, proceeded to modernize, by rebuilding, by putting up heavy ceilings, by taking down the Moorish Tarkish, by running up partitions, by blocking passages, and by converting the dwelling of an Oriental sybarite into lodgings for a chilly Flemish gentleman. As for the immediate successors of this Goth, they contented themselves by neglecting the Alhambra.

For the first two centuries after the conquest the Alhambra attracted but little of the attention of strangers. The names of visitors-alas! that they should be the forerunner of Cook's excursionists !-began to be inscribed upon the walls about 1670. "Dick" Wall, the Irish ex-minister to Charles III., after another century of neglect, furbished up the Alhambra. In 1792, in order to prepare for the reception of a state prisoner, Aranda, the apartments of Charles V. were subjected to the rude ordeal of whitewash, and all the rich Italian arabesques were thus obliterated. The Governor, Savara, now steps in, and taking up his residence in the fortress, sweeps away every vestige of Moorish taste. To Savara succeeded a Catalan, with five daughters. These young ladies, being of a prudential turn, worthy, in fact, of having Mrs. John Gilpin for a mother, laid their pretty hands upon everything tangible, which they carefully removed and turned into gold.

In 1808 Don Ignacio Mantilla was appointed Governor. The Don's wife was not over-pious-in fact, she was a little the other way, and she coveted the treasures of this earth, instead of yearning for eternal wealth awaiting her on the other side of the Great River, provided she kept on the narrow path. The Doña was of such an infidel and practical turn that she kept her donkey in the beautiful chapel, and made the Patio de la Mezquita a pen for the sheep. Here was a tidbit for the Inquisition. How did she manage to escape?

Sebastiani arrived in January, 1810, and he proceeded to convert the Alhambra into a place d'arms, for which purpose countless houses were demolished. Moorish mosques and Christian churches were alike turned into magazines, and convents into barracks. The Moorish pavement of blue and white, in the celebrated Court of the Lions, was torn up to make a garden, the shrubs of which concealed beauties of every kind, while their roots injured the intricate vein-work of pipes by which the fountains played, and their watering destroyed the rooms below.

of the Alhambra.

The principal building of the Alhambra was commenced by Ibn-l-ahmar, in 1248; it was continued by his son,

out by an invalid soldier.

Ferdinand VII. now directed one Don Villa Ecusa to collect all that the French had not sloped off with, and this hidalgo, having gutted the Alhambra, ingeniously

reported that the ruthless invaders had left nothing. The Court of the Lions was now impassable from ruin; the animals were cast upon the ground and broken, and everything bespoke disorder and desolation, when in stepped the second founder of the Alhambra, an humble female peasant, Francisca de Molina, a portress. This girl is the Doña, or Tia Antonia, of Washington Irving, and with her niece, Dolores, and Mateo Ximenez, have been immortalized by his delightful pen. The governor had granted to the Tia the use of the adarves and the garden, and she made money by showing the place and dressing picnic dinners, the garlic being not too much en evidence, until one ultra bacchio festivity caused that privilege to be withdrawn. Then Tia now went to work to repair the ravages made by the French. She put the recumbent lions on their legs, and carted away the rubbish. She collected little bits of the pavement, and set one pipe of the Fountain to play. These efforts having been commented upon by both visitors and the press, shamed the sluggish authorities into an attempt at restoration, so feeble, though, as to be scarcely worthy of recognition.

In 1821 the ancient pile was shattered by an earthquake. In 1823, the then Governor, whose sole object in life was to find work for the galley-slaves, in an evil hour selected the Alhambra for their occupation. His first step was to convert a large portion of the Alhambra into stores for the salt fish of his scoundrel charge; and in order that his fish magazine should be large enough, he tore down and cast over the battlements many of the Moorish lienzos and azulejos. It is needless to say that the gentlemen of the galleys did nothing toward the restoration of the palace.

When Ferdinand VII. joined the great majority, and civil wars broke out, the Alhambra, in common with the Escurial, Aranjuez, and everything royal, was left to go to the dogs. In 1837, the governor--what governors they were! -cut up the Moorish doors of the Sala de los Abencerrages, and permitted a kindred spirit to "repair and beautify la casa Sanchez, one of the most picturesque and Mauresque of dwellings. During the panic occasioned by the incursion of the Carlists under Gomez, the Alhambra was put in a state of defense, which meant demolition and spoliation, and it was not until 1862, when the ex-Queen Isabella visited Granada, that fortune deigned to smile upon this glorious and matchless edifice. This, in brief, is the history of the rise and fall of the Alhambra.

Three alleys opened before me as I approached the Alhambra; that on my right leading to the famous Torres Bermejas, the "red towers," and Madame Calderon's house; that in the middle to the Generalife, and that on my left, which I followed, brought me by a series of enchanting prospects within the enceinte. The wooded slopes are kept green by watercourses, and tenanted by nightingales. On every side was the murmur and plash and ripple of falling water, as it leaped from rocks, sparkled in fern-caressed receptacles, or danced through slopes clad in verdure, rich and soft as the most vividly green moss. Although everything looks as if bestowed by the hand of nature, all the beauty is the creation of man, for the Moor changed this gaunt and barren rock into a perfect Eden. The elm-trees, of which there are a large number, were sent out from England in 1812, by the Duke of Wellington, who presented them to the Governor of the Alhambra. Intermingling with the elms are gigantic cherry-trees, which during my visit were a perfect bouquet of blossom. A sharp turn now conducted me to the grand entrance of La Torre de Justicia, the "Porch," the "Gate of Judg. ment," at which the king or his kaid dispensed judgment after an ancient fashion, which was, at least, more rapid and cheap, and possibly quite as equitable, as any modern

Court of Chancery. This gate was erected in 1308 by Yusuf I. The Moors called it Babu-sh-shariah, the “Gate of the Law."

The inscription over the inner doorway records its elevation and the name of the founder. It ends

"May the Almighty make this (gate) a 'protecting bulwark, and write down its (erection) among the imperishable actions of the just."

Over the outer horseshoe arch is an open hand, which is what Dick Swiveller would call "a puzzler." Some con. sider it an emblem of hospitality and generosity, the redeeming qualities of the Oriental, whilst others refer it to the Hebrew "Jadh," the symbol of power and providence, and others still argue that it was merely intended as a talisman against the "Evil Eye," from the fact that Moorish women, like the Neapolitans of to-day, wore small bands of gold and silver round their necks, until Charles V., by a Pragmactica in 1525, forbade the usage. Over the inner arch is a sculptured key, and the Moors boasted that this gate would never be opened until the hand alluded to took this key. The entrance is carried through a double gate, the intricate, tortuous passages of which are artfully contrived to embarrass an enemy.

Passing onward, I was exercised over a Gothic inscription coeval with the Conquest, recording that event, and the appointment of a gentleman with a dozen names as alcaide. The jurisdiction of the Alhambra is separate from that of Granada, and has its own governor. The office was one of high honor, but it is now of very secondrate importance, indeed.

Traversing a narrow lane, I struck the Plaza de los Algibes, under which are the celebrated Moorish cisterns, filled by the River Darro, the temperature-icecold-of the water being always the same. An awning had just been erected over an adjoining well, where a supply of cold water is sold to the aguadores, or watercarriers from Granda. How picturesque the donkeys, with their trappings of scarlet fringe, and their jarra adorned with branches of trees in blossom. Around, in attitudes so beloved by Gustave Doré, lounge watersellers, equipped with a little tub, a tray whereupon are three or four glasses and a bottle of anisao. Bang! went a real, as I gulped down a draught of the delicious water, just tinted by the aniseed.

This Plaza divides the palace from the Alcazaba-Kassábah, the citadel. A Roman altar from Illiberis, embedded by the Moors, stands in the angle of the wall. It is inscribed by the grateful Valerius to his "most indulgent wife," Cornelia. I wondered as I gazed if this had been prepared by the crafty Val during the lifetime of his lady, like the epitaph written by the Vicar of Wakefield for the worthy Mrs. Primrose. The Alcazaba at the time of my visit was used as a prison for galley-slaves, and I learned that the contents of its once most curious Moorish armory were sold by its "governor "-oh, those governors !-to defray the cost of a bullfight.

I ascended the Torre de la Vela by a very narrow stairway. A fat gentleman was descending. We got jammed. He was, like most stout parties, exceedingly goodhumored-so much so, indeed, that we became fast friends, and I dined with him subsequently at the Washington Irving Hotel. An inscription in the tower records that the Christian flag was first hoisted here by Cardinal Mendoza and his brother, on the 2d of January, 1492, after 777 years of Moorish occupation. "How supremely lovely!" I involuntarily exclaimed, as I gazed out on the panorama. Below me lay Granada, belted with plantations of luminous green-beyond it the Vega, a plain