re little hands. The audience
applauded. The bull turned and came back. Again the capadore eluded him,
throwing the cape on his shoulders, and again the audience applauded.
Three times did this happen. The capadore was very excellent. Then he
retired, and the other capadore played with the bull. After that they
placed the banderillos in the bull, in the shoulders, on each side of
the back-bone, two at a time. Then stepped forward Ordonez, the chief
matador, with the long sword and the scarlet cape. The bugles blew for
the death. He is not so good as Matestini. Still he is good, and with
one thrust he drove the sword to the heart, and the bull doubled his
legs under him and lay down and died. It was a pretty thrust, clean and
sure; and there was much applause, and many of the common people threw
their hats into the ring. Maria Valenzuela clapped her hands with the
rest, and John Harned, whose cold heart was not touched by the event,
looked at her with curiosity.

"You like it?" he asked.

"Always," she said, still clapping her hands.

"From a little girl," said Luis Cervallos. "I remember her first fight.
She was four years old. She sat with her mother, and just like now she
clapped her hands. She is a proper Spanish woman.

"You have seen it," said Maria Valenzuela to John Harned, as they
fastened the mules to the dead bull and dragged it out. "You have seen
the bull-fight and you like it--no? What do you think?

"I think the bull had no chance," he said. "The bull was doomed from
the first. The issue was not in doubt. Every one knew, before the bull
entered the ring, that it was to die. To be a sporting proposition, the
issue must be in doubt. It was one stupid bull who had never fought
a man against five wise men who had fought many bulls. It would be
possibly a little bit fair if it were one man against one bull."

"Or one man against five bulls," said Maria Valenzuela; and we all
laughed, and Luis Ceryallos laughed loudest.

"Yes," said John Harned, "against five bulls, and the man, like the
bulls, never in the bull ring before--a man like yourself, Senor
Crevallos."

"Yet we Spanish like the bull-fight," said Luis Cervallos; and I swear
the devil was whispering then in his ear, telling him to do that which I
shall relate.

"Then must it be a cultivated taste," John Harned made answer. "We kill
bulls by the thousand every day in Chicago, yet no one cares to pay
admittance to see."

"That is butchery," s