Such was then the force of fortune,
   That I too must do her homage,
   For I cannot lose two nobles,
   Because one is lost already;
   Take the other for your husband,
   And be royally betrothed.
   Do you murmur? Then seek justice
   From the mighty mountains yonder,
   Since from man you have no comfort."

And all the Andalusians sigh for the sorrows
of Jimena Gomez, as their comrade sweeps his
hand with a last musical wail over the guitar
strings. But next to Percy sits one who, after
taking a draught from his water-skin, begins in
another humour.

Somewhere or other there once lived an ugly
old widow, thin as asparagus, and yellow as the
fever; with such a shockingly bad temper that
Lot himself would not have endured her. So
she was called Aunt Holofernes, and whenever
she put her head out of window, all the young
people scampered away. Nevertheless, Aunt
Holofernes was tidy and industrious, for which
reason she had trouble enough with her daughter
Pamphila, who was so indolent that it would
take an earthquake to shake her into motion. The
quarrelling between the two began at sunrise.
"You are as dull as Dutch tobacco," said the
mother to the daughter, "and one wants a team
of oxen to draw you out of bed. When you
are up it is nothing but sweethearting and looking
out of window. But I'll make you leap
about, I will." Pamphila, while her mother
scolded, gaped and yawned, and, slipping
behind her, passed out of the house door.

Aunt Holofernes then began to sweep with all
her might, and accompany the wish, swish, wish
with such a monologue as this:

"In my young days girls worked as hard as
mules."

Wish, swish, wish went the broom.

"They lived as close as nuns"—wish, swish.
"Now they are a pack of fools"—wish, swish;
lazy—wish, swisn; dressy—wish, swish;
flighty." But while the mother swept the
daughter had beckoned to a swain, of whose
back the old woman caught sight through
the open door, and instantly down came the
broomstick with a thwack upon it. When
she had beaten the youth off, she beat her
daughter.

"What's the matter," said Pamphila; "am I
never to marry?" "Marry, indeed! How
dare you think of such a thing?" "But you
were married, and so was my grandmother."
"Yes, and for that reason," said the old woman,
"I know better than that any child of mine
should ever do such a thing." But Pamphila
went her old way, till one day when Aunt
Holofernes had a wash, there was a great kettle of
water boiling on the fire that Pamphila was to
pour over the clothes, but just then there was a
young man singing at the window, and so she
slipped out. Hard-washing Aunt Holofernes
lifted the kettle herself; but as she was too old
to carry it, the water was spilt and her foot was
burnt. Then, while she was scolding at the
pain, she looked out of window, and seeing
her daughter again with the swain, began to
scold at her, and prayed that if she was to be
married, the Father of Mischief himself might
be her husband.

Some time afterwards there came a suitor to
Pamphila, so pretty, so soft-spoken, that not
Aunt Holofernes herself knew how to say him
nay. So he was accepted; but, as the wedding-
day drew near, there were odd things said about
the village. The new comer had a strange
familiar manner with the scamps of the district,
and shook hands with them in a fatherly way that
puzzled men. Aunt Holofernes had her
suspicions, and she did not at all like two little
bumps on the top of his head that pushed up
his hair in an odd manner. She remembered
what she had wished when she burnt herself,
and was not sure that she had not got more of
her wish than she wanted.

But the wedding-day came. Aunt Holofernes
had ready her sweet cakes and her bitter
reflections. She had a great olla podrida for
dinner, and a tun of wine ready that was very
generous, as well as a plan that was very mean.
When the married couple was about to enter
the bridal chamber, the old woman, calling her
daughter aside, said, "When you are first in
your chamber, shut door and window carefully,
stop every crack and cranny, and be sure that
there is no hole anywhere open, except the key-
hole. Then take this olive-branch that has been
blessed in church to strike your husband on the
back. That is a custom observed in all
marriages, which signifies that in-doors the wife has
rule, and its intention is to consecrate and
confirm her authority.

Pamphila, for the first time in her life
obedient to her mother, did all that she was told
to do. And when the newly married husband
saw the consecrated olive-branch in his wife's
hand, he was in a hurry to escape. But as
every hole and cranny was stopped up, except
the keyhole, he was obliged to squeeze himself
through that, for the suspicion of the old
woman was correct: this was the Father of
Mischief himself, who may be very clever, but who
had now got into the hands of a stepmother
more than his match. For when he had wriggled
himself through to the other side of the keyhole,
lie was in a bottle that had been fixed there to
receive him, and when he was in the bottle the
old woman carefully corked and sealed it up.
The son-in-law, with the humblest and politest
expressions, begged her to let him free. But
Aunt Holofernes, who was not to be cheated
even by him, took the bottle and marched with
it up to the top of a mountain, without resting,
till she got to its steep, rocky, deserted peak; on
that she left the bottle, and came down again
shaking her fists at her son-in-law as she
departed.

There his highness was enthroned for the next
ten years. And what years they were!—peace
all over the world; everybody minded his own
business without meddling with other folk's