otege_ with her.) He had been given to her by a young school friend
who was dead, and her father would no longer let her keep it, because,
he said, these were no times to keep such creatures, when provisions,
even those fit for a dog, were so dear. He was a very good little
dog--would the Senora take him?

"Let us look at him, Esther," said Owen--"I see you have brought him
with you."

"He is not pretty," said Esther, blushing as she produced him from the
basket. He certainly was not, being a small cur, marked with black and
white, like a magpie, with a tail curling over his back. He did not
appear at all at his ease in society, for he tried to shrink back again
into the basket.

"He was frightened," she said, "for he had been shut up for more than a
month. She had tried to keep him in her bedroom, unknown to her father,
feeding him with part of her own meals; but he had found it out, and had
beaten her, and threatened to kill the dog if ever he saw it again."

"_Pobrecito!_" (poor little thing) said the good Carlota--"we shall take
good care of it. _Toma_" (take this), offering him a bit of meat. But he
crept under her chair, with his tail so depressed, in his extreme
bashfulness, that the point of it came out between his forelegs.

Carlota would have made the young Jewess dine there forthwith, at the
side-table still spread with the remains of the dinner, for social
differences of position were lost in the general misery; but she refused
to take anything, only sipping once from a glass of wine that Carlota
insisted on making her drink of. Then she rose, and, having tied the end
of a string that was fastened to the dog's collar to the leg of the
table, to prevent his following her, took her leave, thanking Carlota
very prettily.

"_A Dios, Sancho!_" she said to the little dog, who wagged his tail and
gave her a piteous look as she turned to go away--"_A Dios, Sancho_,"
she repeated, taking him up and kissing him very affectionately. The
poor child was ready to cry.

"Come and see him every day, my child," said Carlota, "and when better
times come you shall have him again."

CHAPTER II.

Lazaro the Jew was seated towards dusk that evening in a sort of
office partitioned off by an open railing from a great store filled
with a most motley collection of articles. Sofas, looking-glasses,
washing-stands--bales of goods in corded canvass--rows of old boots
purchased from officers' servants--window curtains lying