handkerchief."

"It was no such thing! You stood there for a good hour together, laughing like mad! I felt inclined to strangle you with my own hands, you fool! you fool! you more than fool!"

The enraged girl, now maddened with fury, laid her hands on the neck of her adorer, as if about to strangle him.

Her heart, however, was touched at seeing such a handsome, fine young fellow with his eyes distended with terror; in fact, Valentina took pity on him and let him go, but not without giving his arms several additional pinches.

"You don't deceive me, you know; you don't deceive me! If I find that you are with her again I won't have anything more to do with you."

"All right, I promise not to speak to her any more; but don't go and believe the first story you hear about me."

"Will you promise?" asked the obdurate seamstress, looking at him in a relentless way.

"Never fear."

"Well, you will have to settle with me if you don't keep your word. Come."

This was the calm and tender mode of Valentina's dealings with the young swell of Sarrio; and when he gave Piscis, or any other friend, an account of them, he smiled like a man of the world, and declared that these irascible, imperious women are most attractive to men, especially if, like himself, they were somewhat bored.

After they had made peace, or, to speak more correctly, after Valentina had come to terms, there was a whispered conversation which lasted for some time. Then nothing more was heard, and one was led to suppose that the balcony was vacated. If it were not very ugly to cast a slur on a girl's reputation, one might have suspected that the loving couple had retired to the interior of the house.

Piscis meanwhile kept guard, walking up and down the street; and the fact was, he was not the only one so occupied, for a man had posted himself ever since their arrival in the corner of a doorway, where the shadows were darkest. Motionless and protected by the gloom, he was invisible to Piscis. Profiting by a moment when the back of the latter was turned to the house, the man issued from his hiding-place, and cautiously approached it. He looked at the balcony and hesitated a few seconds. This hesitation caused his failure. By the time he jumped up to catch hold of the bars the terrible Piscis turned and saw him.

With two strides he was under the balcony before the intruder could swing himself up to it, and his famous stick came down with such force on the shoulders of the poor man that he loosened his hold on the bars and measured his length with the street. The wrathful Centaur was about to repeat the blow, when the fellow jumped up with such agility and fled away so swiftly that the second blow struck the ground, and he did not attempt a third.

"Confound it!" cried Piscis.

This exclamation must have reached the ears of his happy friend, for a few seconds later he appeared on the balcony and swung himself into the street.

"What is it?" he asked, approaching his friend.

"A man."

"Where?" asked the cavalier, turning round two or three times.

"He has escaped now. I caught him just as he was about to scale the balcony, and I knocked him down with my stick. Then he took to his heels. By Jove! Romeo couldn't have beaten him in speed."

"This man," returned Pablito gloomily, "must be an old lover of Valentina's. What is to be done?"

"Then, if he be a lover, I don't know what he could be here for, unless it was to give you a licking."

Pablito threw his arm round his friend's shoulder, not to support himself, although his legs trembled somewhat, but to say, in a low voice:

"Do you think so?"

"One—or two, or three."

The handsome young man was silent. At the end of a minute he said:

"Do you know him?"

"I? No; and you?"

"I have never seen him; I only know that he is named Cosme, and that he is a barber."

They left the street in silence, and in silence they arrived at Belinchon's house. There, on taking leave of each other, Pablito said to his friend:

"If I go there again, which I doubt, will you do me the kindness not to lose sight of the balcony, eh?"

"I should rather think so," was the laconic reply of the indomitable Piscis.

The following day was Sunday, and the usual weekly ball took place at the school. They danced in the afternoon from three to seven. The room was spacious, having been built a few years before as a school for children. The benches were piled up on the teacher's platform; the walls were covered with maps and proverbs, and as the followers of Terpsichore danced the languid habanera, they could amuse themselves by reading a portion of the invaluable exhortations tending to show that virtue and labor are the true treasures of childhood: "The studious child will receive the reward of his industry;" "Truth and perseverance are superior to talents." And there at the end over the master's table was the image of Christ crucified (oh, blasphemy!), mounted on a silken background, in the presence of these wild polkas and voluptuous dances.

It was there that, without fear of rain or sun, strangers could court and admire the young girls of Sarrio. And, in truth, all the captains and pilots who visited the town took care to frequent the place. Occasionally their admiration led them to overstep the bounds of British gravity, and their fair beards came too near to the face of some beauty.

"Are you mad, Christian?" she would ask, as she pushed him away.

"Christian! Christian!" the Englishman repeated in astonishment. "What is being a Christian?"

"Goodness, man, don't you know the doctrine? Well, learn it then."

It would be about five or six in the evening, after four or five waltzes and as many polkas had been danced, that these ladies were so charming. The well-circulated blood tinged their cheeks with a bright color; their fair or dark locks, in pretty disorder, floated in the air or fell in adorable curls upon their shoulders; their eyes shone like stars in those heavenly faces, and those ruddy, luscious, half-opened lips revealed immaculate rows of teeth.

But enough, or we shall never finish; albeit in our admiration of the working-girls of Sarrio we are outdone by every Englishman who comes hither.

There was always a sameness in the feminine element of these balls, for it was entirely composed of young girls of the same rung of the social ladder. But there was a dangerous variety in the masculine element, for it consisted of the young gentlemen as well as the young artisans of Sarrio. Thus the artisans considered that their rights were encroached upon by the rival charms of the young gentlemen, and the repeated unequal marriages that took place in the town showed how they had been ousted.

As already remarked, the West Indians were generally satisfied with the somewhat poor and faded young ladies of the place, but the young men were more taken with the charms of the working-girls. Thus the poor artisans and sailors were outdone by the gentry. What were they to do?

They found some consolation in visits to the taverns, and in the use of their sticks, which made every ball the scene of a shower of blows, and two or three gentlemen generally left the school with broken heads on a Sunday.

Pablito had come off pretty well hitherto, thanks to his most faithful Piscis, who undertook to receive the blows intended for him. The only inconvenience he suffered at most of these gatherings was the loss of his hat, and this happened so repeatedly that he was quite certain that they picked a quarrel with him to make him lose it. When an artisan wanted a hat he knew how to get one.

But Piscis could not save him from the blows he received that Sunday; and this not from want of will on the part of the Centaur, but because there are things that really can not be done. With what care did that