different scene was presented on the other side of the great square,
in the centre of which stands the shrubbery and fountain of the
Plaza. Let the reader follow us now inside the massive stone walls
of the Spanish barracks, to a dimly lighted room, where lay a
wounded soldier upon his bed. The apartment gave token in its
furniture of a very peculiar combination of literary and military
taste. There were foils, long and short swords, pistols, hand pikes,
flags, military boots and spurs; but there were also Shakspeare,
Milton, the illustrated edition of Cervantes's Don Quixote, and a
voluminous history of Spain, with various other prose and poetic
volumes, in different languages. A guitar also lay carelessly in one
corner, and a rich but faded bouquet of flowers filled a porcelain
vase.

At the foot of the bed where the wounded soldier lay, stood a boy
with a quivering lip and swimming eye, as he heard the sick man moan
in his uneasy sleep. Close by the head of the bed sat an
assistant-surgeon of the regiment, watching what evidently seemed to
be the turning point as to the sufferer's chance for life or death.
As the boy and the surgeon watched him thus, gradually the opiate
just administered began to affect him, and he seemed at last to fall
into the deep and quiet sleep that is generally indicated by a low,
regular and uninterrupted respiration.

The boy had not only watched the wounded man, but had seemed also to
half read the surgeon's thoughts, from time to time, and now marked
the gleam of satisfaction upon his face as the medicine produced the
desired effect upon the system of his patient.

"How do you think Captain Bezan is, to-day?" whispered the boy,