t patiently;
and now is reinstated in his office and his honors, a large portion of
his property restored, which had been temporarily confiscated, while
he was under suspicion as a Carlist. He is authorized to offer me
pardon, and all these pretty things, if I will return and take a new
oath of allegiance."

"And you will accept, Pintal?"

"Why, in God's name, what do you take me for?--Pardon! I forgot
myself, Sir. Your question is a natural one. But no, I shall surely
not accept. Zea-Bermudez is dead, but there is a part of me which can
never die; and I am happy today because I feel that I am not so poor
as I thought I was."

Ferdy entered, alone. He went straight to his father and whispered
something in his ear,--about the mother, I suspected, for both
blushed, and Pintal said, with a vexed look,--"Ah, very well! never
mind that, my boy."

Then Ferdy threw off his cap and cloak, and, seating himself on a pile
of books at his father's feet, quietly rested his head upon his knee.
I observed that his face was vividly flushed, and his eyes looked
weary. I felt his pulse,--it indicated high fever; and to our anxious
questions he answered, that his head ached terribly, and he was "every
minute hot or cold." I persuaded him to go to bed at once, and left
anxious instructions for his treatment, for I saw that he was going to
be seriously ill.

In three days little Ferdy was with the Lady Angelica in heaven. He
died in my arms, of scarlet fever. In the delirium of his last moments
he saw _her_, and he departed with strange words on his lips: "I am
coming, Lady, I am coming!--my father will be ready presently!"

Some strangers from the neighborhood helped me to bury him; we laid
him near the grave of the First Lady; but very soon his pretty bones
were scattered, and there's a busy street there now.

Pintal, when I told him that the boy was dead, only bowed and smiled.
He did not go to the grave, he never again named the child, nor by the
least word or look confessed the change. But when, a little later, a
fire swept down Dupont Street and laid the poor tent in ashes,
spoiling the desolate house whose beautiful _lar_ had flitted,--when
his wife went moaning maudlinly among the yet warm ashes, and groping,
in mean misery, with a stick, for some charred nothing she would cheat
the Spoiler of, there was a dangerous quality in Pintal's look, as,
with folded arms and vacant eyes, he seemed to stare upon, yet not to
see, the