It is getting dark as I walk past the rnat-
shops; where, like Turks squatted on their
hams, the master, surrounded by his apprentices,
like a father by his children—O,
simple-hearted, wrong-headed country!—sits
watching the plaiting and weaving of the
red, brown, and yellow fibres of the Juncos
(reed), that form such pleasant covers for
floors in their hot climate.  Though they
harbour ambuscades of assassin fleas, how
rich-coloured, hard, dry, cool, and clean
they look. There is no Don there.  I sigh;
for the master is a bullet-headed knave,
patiently crafty and money-getting.  The
chivalrous respect for women is not in him;
for her curses the girl who brings him fire for
his cigar.

What is this next door?  A lottery-stall,
with eager shirt-sleeved peasants conning long
ledger files of thick, black, treacherous-
looking numbers?  A money-changer's, with
bowls of gold-pieces, netted over, so that
they look like canaries in wire cages?  A
guitar-shop.  Look at the rows twenty deep
of raw guitars, unstained, unbrowned,
unstrug; no pegs in them; music, as yet
dumb within them, but still there, as the
future man is in the child.  There is Pajez
at the bench, fitting in the ivory lines
of the finger-board; but there is no Don
Quixote.

I pass on to the drapery-shops, where the
red sashes float and stream, and the broad
Andalucian plaids are displayed, with their
lines of pink and brown, black and yellow.  The
Don is not there.  Nor behind those strings of
mules laden with thick table-slabs of cork.
Where can he be?  I pass shops where fish
is frying in large, hissing pans; church
furniture shops, all beads, crosses, and tinsel;
old picture-shops; dagger-shops; cigar-shops;
stalls of manuscript music; old book-shops,
where there are wonderful pictures of
the triumph of the Spanish fleet at Trafalgar,
and the destruction of El Milordo Nelson, or
the deeds of Cochrane: the Bugbear, as the
frightened peasants of the coast called him.
But nowhere the Don: nowhere the brave,
old, crazed, generous gentleman; rousing
from books to action at the end of life;
throwing by his reading torpor, and great to
do or suffer.

"Perhaps," said I to myself, staring hard
at the unfading Spanish sun, "I am looking
after all, for what is not; seeking for life in
a dead country; seeking for a live hero in a
country of decayed voluptuaries."  Then for
the thousandth time, as I got to my hotel, and
sat down on the edge of my iron bed to pull
off my weary boots, I crooned out that de-
lightful beginning of a never-tiring book:

"En un lugar de la Mancha, de cuyo nom-
bre, &c. . . . adarga autigua, rocin flaco, y
galgo corredor."

"In a part of la Mancha, whose name it is
unnecessary to record, by no means long ago,
lived an hidalgo, whose riches were—a lance
over his chimney-piece, an old target, a lean
jade of a horse, and a greyhound that he
kept for coursing!—"

LINA FERNIE

I.

"I tell you John, you're just a fool!"
exclaimed Widow Harland, regarding her
son with a pettish impatience and astonishment.

John looked very headstrong, and wilful,
and desperately in earnest about the subject
under discussion.  "It is always a hard word
with you, mother," said he, deprecatingly.
"What can you have against Lina?"

"Have against her!  She's the most
conceited, selfish, uppish, wasteful wench in all
Brigham!" was the uncompromising reply.
"Marry her!  She'll break your heart in a
twelvemonth!  She'd break any honest man's
heart, with her idleness and love of finery."

"She has an uncommon pretty face,
mother; and isn't it women's ways to like to
set it off a bit?" pleaded John.  "You never
saw any harm in her until I took on with
her."

"It is not for me to lightlie a neighbour's
daughter when she is nought to me; but
when you talk of bringing in a lass like Lina
Fernie, and setting her up over your old
mother's head, then it's time to speak, I
think.  I hoped you would have acted more
sensible when it came to seeking a wife,
John.  A fine young man, like you, with a
well-plenished house to bring her to, and
work the year in, an' the year out.  Why,
you might have the pick of the parish!"

"And that's what Lina is: she's the pick
of the parish.  Show me her match
anywhere!"

"I say nought about prettiness; for red
and white, and blue eyes like a wax doll's,
Lina would be hard to beat; but they won't
bake your bread, or guide your house, John,
mind that!  What can she do?—there's the
questions."

"Why, I suppose, mother, that, like other
girls, she can learn.  She's only young."

"I don't like her bringing-up.  I don't
like the family, John.  They have never
borne very good characters, either at home
or abroad."

"And is poor Lina to be blamed for
that?"

"Have you spoken to her, yet, John?"

"No. I thought I must speak to you
first?"

"Well, then, I've said my say.  If it had
been Mary Jenner, or Libbie Frost, I would
have been glad to make way for either of
them; but it goes sorely against the grain
with me to give place to Lina Fernie."

"Mary Jenner's older than me, mother;
and Libbie Frost's downright ugly."

"I don't mind of hearing you say so till
Lina came home from her aunt's in London."

"Libbie's well enough for some things, but