ncestors to do here? You have ruined
the girl, and you shall make amends, here and now."

Miralda clasped her hands in a passion of entreaty, and her betrothed,
the boatman, sank upon a bench, overcome with despair.

"I am sorry for you," continued Tacon, "but there is no other
way. Proceed with the ceremony."

Knowing Tacon to be inflexible, and with a wholesome dread of
punishment in case of refusal, the young rake finally expressed his
willingness to yield to the command, and with a freckled trooper
for bridesmaid, and another for groomsman, the marriage rites were
said. While the priest was speaking Tacon had written a note which he
gave to an orderly, instructing him to deliver it to the captain of
the guard. After the nobleman, flushed and trembling with anger, and
the half-fainting girl had been pronounced man and wife, the boatman
meanwhile abandoning himself to a frenzy of tears, Tacon said to the
count, "Your wife will remain here for the present. It is my order
that you return to your country-house alone. You will depart at once."

With blazing eye, widened nostril, and hard-set jaw, Count Almonte
left the room without any recognition of his bride, without the
usual acknowledgment of the governor-general's presence. Tacon bade
the young woman be seated, and told Mantanez also to remain, as he
wished to speak with them after a time. Ten minutes passed. Some
guns were heard at a distance. In ten minutes more an officer hastily
entered the room. Tacon looked up from his writing. "Report, captain,"
he commanded.

"I have to inform your Excellency that your orders have been
obeyed. The Count Almonte lies dead with nine bullets in his body."

The general arose, took the hand of the young woman and placed it in
that of the boatman. "Countess," he said, "you are the widow of a rich
man. You are sole heir to the estate of the late Count Almonte. As
to you, sir, I presume you have no objection to wedding a lady so
well provided with this world's goods. Adieu, Madame Countess, and
may your second marriage be happier than your first."

The Cited

Did Alonzo Morelos begrudge liberty or happiness to Felipe
Guayos? Surely the life of a Havanese artisan could have mattered
little to a prosperous lawyer. Politics may have set the big man's
enmity against the little one, or it may possibly have been that more
advanced form of politics that is called patriotism. It was a good
time for a man to refrain from a