harsh configuration of the masonry, while over the low roof-for there was but a single storey-a cluster of adjacent trees declined their shadowy mass of varicoloured foliage. The front door opened onto a gravel space. Upon the side of this remoter from the house stood a deep tank, and above the water (which was full), and reached by a short flight of steps, was a wooden summerhouse of rustic workmanship. Further abroad extended a grove of walnut trees and arbute and syringa bushes, and a garden whose walks went in and out amid a labyrinth of roses-red, yellow, orange, damask, white, pink, carmine, cream, magenta-all shades, and shapes, and sizes. The cosmical blaze of hue was almost oppressive; yet the brightest of summer was over, and nature's pruning-shears, the breaths of autumn, had lopped a leaf or blossom here and there. Gathered in little heaps those prunings lay, or swirling idly to the faint south breeze, their murderer. The same mellow gold-a lovelier colour than death deserves-was tinging one and all in their decay, twining frond and shrinking stem, and the severed roseleaves, odorous to the last, that strewed the paths in prodigal disorder.

We dined simply. A couple of eggs al plato, a joint, dessert. The ladies moved away to their siesta, my host and I, lighting our cigars, to inspect the farm. Beyond the grove we broke upon a hill, and, cut along its slope, the terrace where the raisins dry. With the aroma of these the air was sweet and heavy, and alive with the hum of a myriad feasting insects. In a large shed-one of severalsome score of labourers were packing the sun-dried

fruit, ordering it with their brown, nervous fingers, or pressing it under boards; and I noticed that every raisin they touched into its place as carefully as a proud mother settles the curls on her child's forehead. Leaving the sheds, we crossed a glen where cucumbers in countless shoals bestrewed the light, loamy soil, while further ahead a plantation of figtrees spread their fan-like leaves into a pleasant canopy, and a purling stream bubbled between tall banks of cane. Here, too, was shade, and the cooling sound of softly flowing water.

Yet, notwithstanding these delights, the walking was hard, the time of day sultry, and presently we were glad to loiter back and lounge in the rosegarden. Here the ladies joined us, and the master sent to the raisin-sheds for a matrimonio; whereupon, the husband accompanying on a guitar, the woman,

a noted cantaora—

"cui liquidam pater

vocem cum cithara dedit,"

sang a malagueña, in the impassioned tones peculiar to these sons and daughters of the Moor. Thus sped a pleasant while, with music and conversation, and good cigars and better wine-rich Málaga, as sweet as honey, or pale dry manzanilla-and the supper hour drew on, and the dusk began to glean his last thin sheaves of light, before we well believed that even the early afternoon was past.

But my instincts are those of a solitary; so after supper, escaping from the oppressive indoor air, I strolled into the open, and stood beside the tank, gazing indolently at the water. Through the lace

like interstices of the boughs and leafage round about, or the tendrils depending from the summerhouse above, shone the soft radiance of the early moon, who, being above the arbour, was in herself invisible, but all the light she yielded to every quarter of the heavens, together with that diffused from a star-point here and there, reflected on the water an exact likeness of the foliage, and when for a caprice I dipped my hand, or any nocturnal insect stirred the surface, the whole appeared to swing and tremble like some fairy mirage, rocked by an invisible and unsubstantial force, and gathering additional strength and beauty from the limpid medium in which rather than on which it lay poised and figured.

It was long before I could tear myself away from so alluring a scene, and when at last I turned to go, the darker and more silent rosary appealed to me, rather than the echo of conversation that faintly reached me from the drawing-room. I accepted in preference nature's more tranquil invitation— borne, it seemed, upon the luscious scent of the infinitude of roses-and stepped into the garden, carefully threading my way among the paths, for little or no light sifted through the denser maze of boughs, and here the moon was quite obscured.

The dream is broken. Such is the life of this delectable land between the mountains and the sea, from the majestic Sierras to the corkwoods of Almoraima, where the ruddy bark is stripping from

D

the tree; or the level glebe below San Roque, where grain is sown and harvested, and the buckets of the noria go clattering round and round to the swinging tread of blindfold oxen; this latter about the Bay of Calpe, from the Sierra Carbonera, capped by a prehistoric watchtower known as "The Queen of Spain's Chair," to Campamento and Línea de la Concepción, or westward to venerable Algeciras. These were the scenes of war, but spear and sword are buried and forgotten; earth's many scars are healed, and spade and reaping-hook and ploughtail are in hand. ¡Arre! ¡ Arre!-and the careless husbandman goes peacefully to and fro,

35

CHAPTER III.

A BOURGEOIS FAMILY IN THEIR DAILY LIFE.

ADRID. A fine spring morning at seven o'clock. Sunshine everywhere. The narrow pavements are astir with early risers of the poorer class, the cafetines and puestos de café with lowly customers sipping their scalding cups of recuelo; the markets "all alive with buyers and with sellers are humming like a hive," and the general atmosphere is agog with the multitudinous noises of a great city just awoken from its rest. A strident army of itinerant hawkers and petty craftsmen goes ceaselessly to and fro. The trapero (half scavenger, half ragpicker, or as London slang would call him, the tot-raker), with his long-drawn note, is followed by the knife-grinder, with his whistle and nasal cry, "afilado-o-o-r"; by the flowerseller with his moke-his the prettiest and most of all (the flowerseller's, I mean, not the moke's); the honeyman, with his "miel de la Alcarria, miel"; and a myriad others. For everything, in Spain, seems saleable in the street; toothpicks and brushes, combs and pins, jewellery, perfumery, handkerchiefs, tablecloths, cravats and ribbons, caps and walking - sticks,

musical cry