"They had met, and they had parted;
Time had closed o'er each again,
Leaving lone the weary hearted
Mournfully to wear his chain."--MS.


A deliciously cool, still evening, had succeeded the intense heat of a
Spanish summer day, throwing rich shadows and rosy gleams on a wild,
rude mountain pass in central Spain. Massive crags and gigantic trees
seemed to contest dominion over the path, if path it could be called;
where the traveller, if he would persist in going onwards, could only
make his way by sometimes scrambling over rocks, whose close approach
from opposite sides presented a mere fissure covered with flowers and
brushwood, through which the slimmest figure would fail to penetrate;
sometimes wading through rushing and brawling streams, whose rapid
currents bore many a jagged branch and craggy fragment along with
them; sometimes threading the intricacies of a dense forest,
recognizing the huge pine, the sweet acorn oak, the cork tree,
interspersed with others of lesser growth, but of equally wild
perplexing luxuriance. On either side--at times so close that two
could not walk abreast, at others so divided that forests and streams
intervened--arose mountain walls seeming to reach the very heavens,
their base covered with trees and foliage, which gradually thinning,
left their dark heads totally barren, coming out in clear relief
against the deep blue sky.

That this pass led to any inhabited district was little probable, for
it grew wilder and wilder, appearing to lead to the very heart of the
Sierra Toledo--a huge ridge traversing Spain. By human foot it had