through villages where the finger-posts were
great wooden crosses, over mountains where
the passes and gorges were decked with a
radiant purple, and where our horses' hoofs
beat sweetnrss from the dry thyme we crushed
beneath us as we rode (Spanker wanted, but
I stopped him, to get off and collect some of
it for our next pea-soup at Gib).

Ah! now somehow or other the sunshine
that makes the brown holland Minds in my
room transparent, and stripes them with a
curious cross pattern of the window-frames,
brings all the weary delight of that dreadful
ride into my mind. How thoroughly Spanish
it was! I, with my leather bag of wine tied at
my saddle-tree, where it splashed, churned,
and gurgled, making sweet speaking music to
me as I rode; then the switch of pear-tree, the
green Moorish wells of stirrups, and the quaint
Rosinante of a horse, branded on the left
flank—although, Heaven knows, he was not
one of what Spanker calls "the Runaway
family;" and as for stealing him, no horse-
stealer in the world would risk so much, only
to anticipate the knacker by a week. Then
my great crimson and green umbrella,
expanded like a full-blown Van Toll tulip above
my scalding head. Then my guide, the little
boy-man with the trim legs, little jacket,
turbaned hat, and red bundle tied to his
saddle—his luggage for his four days' ride.
Shall I ever forget that religions procession
with lights and banners, that screamed hymns
all night through Albania, where the Moors
were once routed, and where the Romans
had their baths, and which, an hour or two
past midnight, seemed to break into a sort
of grasshopper chirrup of dry bony castanets
and fandangoes, without beginning or end?
What a change that cool dewy night, when I
sat at the window, looking out at the new
sky spangled with new stars, larger and of a
better water than those that shine over Soho
and Mile End, to that burning noon of so
many hours ago, that it seems now a week of
hours when I rode like a hunted mad dog,
with my dry sore throat pining for water,
between those huge hedges of cacti where
the cicalas kept up their mocking and
unceasing chorus. When all the world seemed
asleep, and we had to wake up the inn we
rode into by a lusty pounding on the stable
door. Then, what came next?—O, that
tracing round and round the bridle-tracks
worn in the black sand, by the dried-up tor-
rents where the oleanders, crimson and
purple, grew, and over the pass by the windmill,
that seemed to fly from us, to the mountain
villages where the raisins were drying
and scenting the air, up to the higher plateaus
where the murder-crosses began to dot the
road, and where, at last, we saw the star-
lamps that were as the habour lights to the
befogged mariner.

It is all these scenes—hot dusty lanes where
we ride through clouds aa of amoke, small
bowling-greens of English turf high up among
the mountains, where we burst out into
gallops in the very gladness of our hearts,
and soon after in a quiet tame amble enter
the long avenues that lead to the royal city.
These are the scenes my mind turns over,
just as if it were tumbling over a collection
of proof-prints just wet from tlie press. Now
I am led up a dark staircase into a dark
room, and throw myself worn out on the
anatomy of a sofa, as the agile waiter flings
open the shutters of the darkened windows,
and asks me what I will take—I, a washed-
up survivor from a tossing sea of troublous
hours, ask feebly in a thready, tired voice,
what hour it is, believing by the hot years
that seem to have droned by since I first got
on the saddle where I have been all day
roasting, that it is about three, for my watch
had stopped. The waiter tells me that it is
only eleven, at which I am lost in wonder.
I order rolls, butter, a melon, and a bottle of
gaseous lemonade, which I know will be
tepid as broth and flat as ditchwater; but I
am too burnt up and debilitated to be able to
reject or reason upon the first suggestion of
my thirsty appetite. It comes. I draw
myself up to the perpendicular, and fall-to.
The melon melts at my touch—the lemonade
I unwire with caution; instead of going
off like a pistol, it oozes out imbecilely, and
I drop half the contents on my knee. Gradually,
after a short balmy nap, I feel new blood
filling my heart just now, dry and empty.
The fire passes away. I feel vigorous,
refreshed, and hearty. I inquire for Spanker,
who had left me for Granada three days ago.
I find he is at the Alhambra, and the night
before had got up a gipsy dance within the
walls of that kingly ruin. All the chiefs had
been there from their caves outside the
palace, and the Boleros and Eastern dances
had been fast and furious; the waiter,
smiling, told me I should find Señor Spanker
up in the Hall of the Ambassadors with
Bensaken, the famous guide. Ben—Saken—
it sounded very nautical and English, but
Ben by descent was a Moor.

A knock at the door—enter gipsy boy
quite out of breath, who puts in my hand a
cocked-hat note from Spanker, inviting me to
come to the madhouse, in the Street of the
Five Wounds. If I missed him there, I was
to meet him at the Alhambra.

Away I went to the street of the Five
Wounds to the madhouse. "Elizabeth
Martin!" as Spanker would have said. The
fugitive fellow had gone half an hour ago.
Left a message, that the English Señor should
not miss seeing the place. Should find him
at the Alhambra, I went in. O what a
humbling sight to a man who stands much
on his head, a madhouse is! Here were men,
who from some single warp of the blood,
some wrench of a valve, some few months
too long repetition of one idea, were become
beast men, unreasoning creatures, whom the
world thought it was compelled to enslave