and looked down on the city and the ravine
that serves the red towers for a moat, that
still Death and the Christian mocked and
spurred over. We moralised in the great
Hall of the Ambassadors, where Spanker
would take off his boots and put them in the
niche where the Moslem nobles once put
their scarlet and yellow papooshes. We lay
down and sang in the small, dark, windowless
bedrooms; in fact, we rehearsed, as far
as time would allow, the old Moorish life.

At last, we got to the old tilting-ring of
the unfinished palace of Charles the Fifth,
and Ben, taking out a greasy copy of the old
chronicle he had referred to, began to read
the story of the King's Tournament in the
April of I quite forget what year.

The account began with a good deal of
military millinery. Spanker, eyeglass up,
with the usual vacant glittering stare of that
optical implement, listens intently. All
Spain must have been, for months before,
perfectly alive with carts laden with Eastern
gold-stuffs, crimson and azure damasks,
striped brocades, for the decorations of the
knights' pavilions, the housings of their
horses, and the decorations of their squires
and varlets. As for the lists, to judge by the
chronicler's sanguine account, they must have
been "as gay as the Oxford Street windows
when the spring fashions come out," said
Spanker. As for the knights, they must
have looked as gorgeous as court-cards set on
horseback: for, while the shield of one was
stamped with red bezants, another was
spangled from top to toe with golden bees;
a third wore on his helmet a black dragon
with wings outspread; a fourth was liveried
in a suit half red, half blue; and next
him rode a Gascon gentleman with a gold
weathercock on his helmet, to show that he
was a knight-errant bent wherever the wind
might blow. Terrible was the stormy shock
when these brave men met full-butt in the
centre of the lists. Then the air was darkened
with splintering lances, broken banners,
and floating feathers; sparks flew, like hives
of fire-flies from every helmet; shields were
split; blazons were erased with blood. Many
that came singing and scornful, went away
with bandaged and aching heads.

It was pleasant sitting there in that ruined
amphitheatre of chivalry, hearing of the
fierce, honest sport of the gentlemen who had
not yet invented that great safety-valve for
superfluous energy—fox-hunting. Again
seemed to pour into the circle a sort of
deified Astley's troop of plumed steel men,
each led by a lady with a golden chain.
Again we heard the horn's blast driving in a
great cavalcade of spears, borne firm and
evenly, with banners roofing over all. As for
Bensaken, I think he would have gone on
reading all night the special blazon of each
knight, the beauty of each horse, the peculiar
excellence of each course of spear-breaking—

Spanker, rising, and taking the Gorgon
glass from his eye, to show that the house
was going to divide, remarked: "All I can
say is, that it was a precious plucky business;
but it must have taken a great deal out of
'em. How could a fellow go on parade next
morning, I should like to know, after he had
been carrying fourteen stun' of armour about
lor five hours, had his helmet poked off his
head twice, and three times been pushed over
his crupper? It's all very well, but I should
like to see a man do it."

"BUT THESE WERE SPANIARDS," said Ben,
closing the book.

            A SPECIAL CONVICT.

SIR HENRY HAYES, said my informant (an
old lady who had been the wife of a government
official in New South Wales) was
what was called in Sydney "a Special."
Specials were gentlemen by birth and education,
who had been convicted of offences
which, however heinous in a legal point of
view, did not involve any particular degree
of baseness. For instance, Major B., who,
in a violent fit of passion, stabbed his footman
for accidentally spilling some soup and
soiling the king's livery, which the Major
was then wearing—was a Special: so was
the old German Baron, of whom I may
speak to you on another occasion: and so
were those Irish gentlemen who took a
prominent part in the rebellion, and escaped
the fate that awaited Mr. Emmett—Specials.
All these kinds of criminals, up to the
departure of General Macquarie, and the
arrival of Sir Thomas Brisbane, were not
treated like common thieves and receivers of
stolen property, but with great consideration.
If they were not emancipated immediately
on their arrival, they were suffered to be at
large, without the formality of a ticket of
leave. They were, in short, treated rather
as prisoners of war on their parole, than as
prisoners of the Crown in a penal
settlement. Grants of land were not given to
them while they were in actual bondage, but
they were permitted to locate themselves on
any unoccupied pieces of land in the vicinity
of Sydney. The greater number of them
were well supplied with funds by their
relations in England, Ireland, or Scotland,
and erected very comfortable, if not particularly
handsome, abodes, and laid out gardens
and grounds. General Macquarie went a
little too far, perhaps. He not only admitted
them to his table, as soon as they were
emancipated, but he elevated some of them
to the magisterial bench.

Sir Henry built a pretty little cottage on the
estate known as Vaucluse, and upon which
the house of Mr. William Charles Wentworth
now stands. There is not a lovelier site in
the known world. Beautifully wooded with
evergreens, the land covered with every
description of heath, which is in bloom
nearly all the year round; a lovely bay of