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Cai.

of trees. The small entrance footbridge and were in the gate and the footbridge lay act of crossing it, when they just beyond this angle. became aware that the stream "Hullo!" exclaimed Captain beneath them differed from all streams in their experience. It was not rippling like other streams; it was not murmuring; it was tinkling out a gay little operatio tune!

"What's up?"

"Nothin'"-for the light apparition had vanished. "Besides, she'd be wearin' black, o' course."

"I wish you'd talk more coherent," said Captain Tobias, stopping short again and eyeing him. "I put it to you, now. Here I be, tumbled out 'pon a terminus platform in a country I've never set eyes on. As if that wasn' enough, straightaway things start to happen so that I want to hold my head. And as if that wasn' enough, you work loose on the jawin' tacks till steerage way there's none. I put it to you."

"I'm sorry, 'Bias," Cai assured him contritely as they moved on. "Maybe I'm upset by the pleasure o' seein' ye here. Many a time I've picter'd it, an'-I don't know if you've noticed, but these little things never do fall out just like a man expects."

"I've noticed it to-day, right enough," said Tobias with some emphasis. But he was mollified, and indeed seemed on the point of adding a word when of a sudden he came to yet another halt and eyed his friend more reproachfully than everno, not reproachfully save by implication: with bewilderment rather, and helpless surmise.

"What?" gasped Captain Tobias. "Which?"—and, with that, speech failed him.

The pair had come to the

To be more precise, it was rendering the waltz - tune in "Faust," an opera by the late M. Gounod. Captain Hocken and Captain Hunken knew nothing of "Faust" or of its composer. But they could recognise a tune.

"Which?" repeated Tobias gasping, holding by the handrail of the bridge. "You or me? Or both, perhaps?"

"Two glasses o' port wine only, 'Bias . . . and you saw me at the station. I'd run all

the way too. .. Besides, you hear it." Relief, of a sudden, broke over Captain Cai's face. "It's the box!" he cried.

With that he was aware of the sound of a merry laugh behind him-a feminine laugh, too, not less musical than the melody still tinkling at his feet. He turned about and confronted Mrs Bosenna as she stepped forth from her hiding in the bushes, her maid Dinah in attendance close

behind her.

"Good afternoon again, Captain Hocken! And is this Captain Hunken? . . . It was polite of you-polite indeedto bring him so soon."

She held out a hand to Tobias, who, to take it, was forced to relinquish for a moment his clutch on the rail.

"Servant, ma'am," said he

in a gruff unnatural voice, and fell back on his support.

She laughed again merrily. "And you'll forgive me for making you welcome with musical honours? That was a sudden notion of Dinah's. She spied you coming up the road, and-Dinah, can you manage to stop that silly tune?"

"I'll try, mistress." Dinah stooped, groped amid the grasses, and produced the musical-box from its lair.

"You can," stammered Captain Cai, as if repeating a formula, "turn it off-at any time-by means of a backhanded switch."

"It's yours, then!" Mrs Bosenna olapped her hands together as she turned on him.

"It's mine," confessed Captain Cai. "The question might occur to you, ma'am

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"And, the next news, it's playin' tunes in a ditch," pursued Captain Tobias.

"I think I can explain,” put in Mrs Bosenna sweetly, hastening to close up the little breach which, for some reason or other, had suddenly opened between these two good friends. "Captain Hocken, being cumbered with the box on his way to pay me a visit, hid it in the bushes here for the time, meaning to recover it on his way back to the station."

“That's so, ma'am," Captain Cai corroborated her.

"But having misjudged the

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"Well, you shall hear how meantime we happened on it. ... We are very particular about our cream, here at Rilla: and with this warm weather coming on, Dinah has been telling me it's time we stood the pans out in running water. Haven't you, Dinah?”

Dinah smoothed her print gown. It was not for her to admit here that early in the day from an upper window she had been watching for Captain Hocken's approach, had witnessed it, had witnessed also the act of concealment, and had faithfully reported it to her mistress.

"So," continued Mrs Bosenna hardily, "reckoning that the bed of the stream may have been choked by what the winter rains carry down, and this being our favourite place for the pans, under the cool of the bridge, down happens Dinah

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"Excuse me, ma'am; but

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"And I don't know, either," mused Mrs Bosenna, as Dinah helped her to undress that night. (This undressing was, in fact, but a well-worn excuse for mistress and maid to chat and due difference of position observed-exchange confidences before bedtime). "Captain Hocken is simple-minded, as any one can tell; but not absent-minded by nature. At least, I hope not. I hate absent-minded men."

She glanced at her glass, and turned about sharply.

"Dinah, you designing woman! I believe you slipped that box into his pocket? Yes, when you pretended that his coat wanted brushing,-I saw you!"

(To be continued.)

BRITISH MERCENARIES IN VENEZUELA.

years the Spanish colonies had endured a tyranny almost incredible. If Bourbon rule in Naples were the "negation of God," what words can fitly describe their rule in South America?

Excluded from all part in the administration of the land of their birth, debarred from every avenue of profitable trade, their every action, from the cradle to the grave, so rigorously controlled that, without leave of Viceroy or Captain-General, no man dare leave the province wherein he was born, none visit Spain without permission from the King himself, the Creoles had remained so firm in their loyalty that, whilst yet a Bourbon sat on the throne of Spain, all efforts to rouse them to demand redress, by arms if need be, had proved vain. Even Napoleon failed, whose envoy, hardly eluding the British cruisers, all but fell a victim to the infuriated mob of Caracás. And yet it was Napoleon who, by seating his brother on the throne of Ferdinand the Catholic, brought about a movement which, commencing with the refusal to obey an usurper, ended with defiance of a lawful king.

A CENTURY has passed since Venezuela's cry for help against the tyranny of Spain summoned to her shores, from which so few were ever to return, the gallant and the adventurous of the United Kingdom: crusaders of liberty, the fame of whose achievements has faded from memory as if they had never lived and fought and died. Yet were they bright with glory. On the plains of the Orinoco, on the slopes of the Andes, deeds were wrought by our countrymen not unworthy a place beside the proudest battle records of the British Army. Carabobo, where nine hundred resolute British soldiers overthrew six thousand of the choicest troops of Spain; the Bridge of Boyaça, where the desperate valour of three hundred brought about the surrender of an army; Bombonà, where a handful of war-worn veterans snatched vietory from the very jaws of defeat, these names, and many more, did they but recall deeds done for England's sake, had surely been household words as familiar as Badajos and Albuera to all who prize the memory of heroism. Though time has proved the cause for which they gave Early in 1810 Venezuela their lives unworthy, though took the momentous step of Dead-Sea apples be the fruit assuming the management of of so much brave endeavour, her own affairs, and a selftheir valour and their martial appointed Junta, claiming to prowess deserve better than rule in the name of the exiled the oblivion which has befallen Carlos IV., seized the reins them. of government, resolved, whilst For nearly three hundred it had the power, to redress

the grievances to which, in their General, Miranda, a prishappier times, no Spanish oner. A year later and the king had ever lent an ear. streets of Caracás, which had The movement, purely con- run red with the blood of stitutional in its commence- Monteverde's victims, were gay ment, aiming only at the re- with the flowers strewn before moval of disabilities and some the chariot in which the fairmeasure of self-government, est maidens in the land drew speedily became a revolution, the laurel-crowned Bolivar in and on the 5th July 1811 the triumph to the Capitol. AnIndependence of Venezuela was other year, and the hero was proclaimed at Caracás. once again a fugitive, and those who had welcomed him were flying with bleeding feet over the mountains before the reeking lances of Boves' "Infernal Legion." Two years more passed, and when once again fortune seemed to smile on the Patriot cause, in swift succession came a series of disasters so overwhelming that all hope of success seemed vain, and yet, within five years, not a Spanish soldier was left in Venezuela or New Granada, and the Republican banners were sweeping forward across the Andes to the last great battle which was to free all South America from the Caribbean to Cape Horn.

Crushed under the heel of Napoleon, its armies scattered, its navy destroyed, Spain could spare neither men nor ships to save its tottering Empire, and nearly two years passed before a handful of Spanish troops under the Count de Monteverde arrived to commence a war destined to rage with unexampled fury for thirteen years, and memorable, even amongst civil wars, for its atrocious barbarity. Murder, massacre, and destruction everywhere marked the passage of the Royalist armies, whose leaders seemed to vie with each other in cold-blooded ferocity. Nor were their adversaries a whit behind them. It was Bolivar himself who clouded his fair fame by proclaiming the "Guerra à Muerte," and history records no document more terrible than a proclamation issued at Cartagena fixing the price of a commission in Spanish heads-twenty for an Ensign, thirty for a Lieutenant, fifty for a Captain.

Masters of all Venezuela in the spring of 1812, before the end of summer the Patriot leaders were fugitives, their followers scattered,

Throughout the struggle, though, in answer to repeated applications for assistance, it had more than once offered mediation, the British Government had steadily refused all help to the insurgents. But the help which a Government might refuse, private sympathy and the spirit of adventure might afford, and to them, after four years of conflict, Bolivar determined to appeal. Not a few British subjects were already serving with the Republican forces, chief among them the Scotsman, Gregor

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