thers were like. _Peluchona_ was the
worst of women, yet he had seen even her weep and moan before her little
one in danger.

He gazed toward the sun, which was beginning to sink in a majestic
summer sunset. There was still time to take the infant back to the house
before its parents would return. And if he should encounter them, he
would lie, saying that he had found the infant in the middle of the
street; he would extricate himself as well as he could. Forward; he had
never felt so brave.

Carrying the infant in his arms he walked at ease through the very
streets over which he had lately hastened with the anxious gait of fear.
He mounted the staircase without encountering anybody. Above, the same
solitude. The door was still open, the bolt forced. Within, the
disordered rooms, the broken furniture, the drawers upon the floor, the
overturned chairs and clothes strewn about, filled him with a sensation
of terror similar to that which assails the assassin who returns to
contemplate the corpse of his victim some time after the crime.

He gave a last fond kiss to the child and left it upon the bed.

"Good-bye, my pet!"

But as he approached the head of the staircase he heard footsteps, and
in the rectangle of light that entered through the open door there
bulked the silhouette of a corpulent man. At the same time there rang
out the shrill shriek of a female voice, trembling with fright:

"Robbers!... Help!"

_Magdalena_ tried to escape, opening a passage for himself with his head
lowered, like a cornered rat; but he felt himself seized by a pair of
Cyclopean arms, accustomed to beating iron, and with a mighty thrust he
was sent rolling down the stairs.

On his face there were still signs of the bruises he had received from
contact with the steps, and from the blows rained upon him by the
infuriated neighbors.

"In sum, sir. Breaking and entering. I'll get out in heaven knows how
many years.... All for being kind-hearted. To make matters worse, they
don't even give me any consideration, looking upon me as a clever
criminal. Everybody knows that the real thief was _Chamorra_ whom I
haven't seen since.... And they ridicule me for a silly fool."

END

THE LAST LION

SCARCELY had the meeting of the honorable guild of _blanquers_ come to
order within its chapel near the towers of Serranos, when Senor Vicente
asked for the floor. He was the oldest tanner in Valencia. Many masters
recalled their apprentice