ull-ring we had to pass by a circle of little buildings, low dens
with small barred windows and closed doors. Blood was trickling from
under some of these over the brown and dusty earth, and the low, heavy
breathing and groans of a horse in agony came from one or another at
intervals.

I looked through the grated slit of one, as I passed, and saw two men,
or, rather, fiends in the shape of men, crouched on the floor of the
dark and noisome den. Between them lay outstretched the body of a
horse, old and thin, worn to the last gasp in the cruel service of the
streets. On its flank was a long open wound. One of the men, bending
over it, had a red-hot iron glowing in his hand. What they were going
to do I could not tell, and I did not wait to see.

The horse was one, doubtless, which unhappily had survived last
Sunday's bull-fight, and was being horribly patched up, terribly
stimulated by agony to expend its last spark of vitality in this.

In these loathsome little dens this fiendish work goes on, the poor
mangled brutes are brought out from the ring, their gaping wounds are
plugged with straw, or anything that is at hand, and then they are
thrust back on to the horns of the bull.

More than ever filled with loathing of my kind, I passed on in silence
towards the ring.

It was no use speaking to Suzee. She could not understand what I felt.
I thought of Viola. If she had been here, what would she have
suffered? Of all women I had met, I had never known one who had the
same exquisite compassion, the same marvellous sympathy for all living
things as she had.

We shewed our tickets, passed through the wicket, and were inside the
vast circle.

The impression on the eye as one enters is pleasing, or would be if
one's brain were not there to tell one of the scenes of infamy that
take place in that grand arena.

Wide circles, great sweeping lines have always a certain fascination,
and the form that charms one in the coliseum is here also in these
modern imitations.

The huge arena, empty now and clean, sprinkled with fine white sand,
and with circle after circle, tier after tier of countless seats
rising up all round, cutting at last the blue sky overhead, is in
itself impressive.

We passed to our seats, which were a little low down, not much raised
above the level of the boarding running round the arena.

They were on the coveted shady side of the ring, where the sun would
not be in our eyes. On the left of us was