"I cried, 'For the last time I ask you. Will you stay with me?'

"'No! no! no!' she said, and she stamped her foot.

"Then she pulled a ring I had given her off her finger, and cast it into
the brushwood.

"I struck her twice over--I had taken Garcia's knife, because I had
broken my own. At the second thrust she fell without a sound. It seems
to me that I can still see her great black eyes staring at me. Then they
grew dim and the lids closed.

"For a good hour I lay there prostrate beside her corpse. Then I
recollected that Carmen had often told me that she would like to lie
buried in a wood. I dug a grave for her with my knife and laid her in
it. I hunted about a long time for her ring, and I found it at last.
I put it into the grave beside her, with a little cross--perhaps I did
wrong. Then I got upon my horse, galloped to Cordova, and gave myself up
at the nearest guard-room. I told them I had killed Carmen, but I would
not tell them where her body was. That hermit was a holy man! He prayed
for her--he said a mass for her soul. Poor child! It's the _calle_ who
are to blame for having brought her up as they did."



CHAPTER IV

Spain is one of the countries in which those nomads, scattered all over
Europe, and known as Bohemians, Gitanas, Gipsies, Ziegeuner, and so