evidently that of a child. It had been severed from the head by a bloody knife. It was a mute threat, but they understood it but too well. Every man there sprang to his feet with a groan or an oath. Such a threat. they remembered had been sent to the parents the very day before the infant Ranulfo Ortega had been found dead not a hundred yards from his father's door. Did this mean also, that the last demand for ransom had been made, and the patience of his abductors was exhausted? Don Gregorio clasped his hands over his eyes, and reeled against the wall. Leon sprang to his feet, pale to his lips, his eyes blazing. Julian Garcia picked up the hair which had fallen from his hand; the others stood grouped in horrified expectancy. Doña Feliz stood for a moment looking at them with lofty courage and determination upon her face. "What," she cried, "is this a time for hesitation? The money must be paid, the child's life saved. Vengeance can wait!" She spoke with a fire that thrilled them, and though they spoke but of the ransom, it was the word "Vengeance" that rang in their ears, and steeled Don Gregorio to the terrible task that awaited him. That night the quaint hiding places of the vast hacienda were ransacked, and many a hoard of coin was extracted from the deep corners of the walls, and the depths of half ruinous wells. Doña Isabel saw treasures of whose existence she had never heard before, but perhaps vaguely suspected; for through the long years of anarchy the Garcias had become expert in secreting such surplus wealth as they desired to keep within reach. Large as was the sum brought to light, it barely sufficed to meet the demands of the robbers; yet it was a question how it was to be conveyed by one person to the spot indi. cated for the payment of the ransom and delivery of the child-and it had been urgently insisted upon that but one man should go into the very stronghold of the bandits. At daybreak, Don Gregorio mounted his horse, having refused the offer of Leon Valle to take his place, and set out on his mission. He knew well the place appointed, for he had been in his youth an adventurous mountaineer, and more than once had penetrated the deep gorge into which late in the afternoon, he descended, bearing with him the gold. As he entered the "Zahuan del Infierno " he shuddered. Not ten days before he had passed through it, followed by a dozen trusty followers, in search of his child, and had discovered no trace of him; now he was alone, weighted with treasure- —a rich prize for the outlaws he had gone to meet. Once he fancied he heard a step behind him; doubtless he was shadowed by those who would take his life without a moment's hesitation; yet he pressed on, obliged to leave his horse and proceed on foot, for at times the cliffs were so close together that a man could barely force his way between them. Just as the last rays of daylight pierced the gloomy abyss, at a sudden turn in the narrowest part of the gorge he saw standing two armed men, placed in such a position that the head of one overtopped that of the other, while the features of both were shadowed, though made the more forbidding by heavy black beards, which it occurred to Don Gregorio later were probably false and worn for the purpose of disguise. At the feet of the foremost was placed a child; and though he restrained the cry that rose to his lips, the tortured father recognized in him his son-but so emaciated, so deathly pale, with such wild, startled eyes, gazing like a hunted creature before him, yet seeing nothing, that he could scarcely credit it was the same beautiful, sensitive, highly strung Norberto who had been wrested from him but a short month before. At the sight he felt an almost irresistible impulse to precipitate himself upon those fiends who thus dared to mock him; but even had his hands been free to grasp the pistol in his belt, to have done so would have been to bring upon himself certain death; as it was he could but look with blind rage from the bags of gold he carried to the brigands who stood like statues, the right hand of the foremost laid upon the throat of the trembling boy. Even in that desperate moment, he noticed that the hand was whiter and more slender than the hands of common men are wont to be; the nails were well formed and well kept, though there was a bruise or mark on the second one, as though it had met some recent injury. He was not conscious at the time that he noticed this, but it came to him aftewards. The foremost man did not speak; it was the other, who in a soft voice, as evenly modulated as if in words of purest courtesy, bade him welcome, and thanked him for his prompt appearance. "Let us dispense with compliments," said Don Gregorio huskily. "Here is the money you have demanded for my child. I know something of the honor of bandits, and as you can gain nothing by falsifying your word, I have chosen to trust in it. Here am I, alone with the gold ;" and he poured it out on the rock at the child's feet. "Count it if you will ;" and he put out his hand and laid it upon the child's shoulder. As he did so, his hand touched the brigand's and both started, glaring like two tigers before they spring; but at the moment Norberto bounded over the scattered heap of coin and into his father's arms. As he felt that slight form within his grasp, the father reeled, and his sight failed. him; a voice presently recalled him to his senses, and glancing up he saw the two men still standing motionless with their pistols leveled upon him and the child. "The Señor will find it best to withdraw backward," said the bandit; "there is not space here for me to have the honor of pass ing and leading the way, and it is even too narrow for your Grace to turn. You will find your horse at the entrance to the gorge; it has been well cared for. Adios, Señor, and may every felicity attend this fortunate termination of our negotiations." "I doubt not there will," cried Don Gregorio, though in a voice of perfect politeness, "for I swear to you I will unearth the villains who have tortured and robbed me, and give myself a moment of exquisite joy with every drop of life blood I slowly wring from them. You have my gold, and I have my child, and now, vengeance." Gregorio Garcia knew so well the spirit of his race that perhaps he was assured that no immediate risk would follow this proclamation. The word "vengeance" rang from cliff to cliff, yet the bandits only smiled and bowed, waving a hand in token of farewell, as with what haste he might, he withdrew. A turn in the gorge soon hid them from his sight, and staggering through the darkness, he hastened on with his precious burden, feeling that Norberto had fainted in his arms. It was near midnight when he reached the hacienda, and needless is it to attempt to describe the joy of the mother, though the child after one faint cry of recognition laid his head upon her breast with a long, shuddering sigh, which warned her that his strength and courage had been so overtaxed that they were, perhaps, destroyed forever. As days passed, it seemed evident that his mind was suffering from the shock. The male relatives who during the absence of Don Gregorio, had mostly dispersed to find, manlike, some distraction afield, returned one by one to embrace the child; but he turned from each one with unreasoning fear and aversion, unable to distinguis between them and the strangers in whos hands he had been held a prisoner. A some of them he gazed as if fascinated, es pecially at his uncle Leon; and when by any chance the latter touched him he would burst into agonizing wails which ceased only 1 when his father held him closely in his arms, whispering words of affection and encouragement. Before many days it became evident that Norberto was dying. There was a constant, low, shuddering cry upon his lips, "He will kill me! He will kill me if I tell!" and the horrified father and mother became convinced that Norberto knew at least one of his captors, and that deadly fear alone prevented him from uttering the name. They entreated him in vain, and one night the end came, and Norberto's wailing cry was still. were The family was alone, except for the presence of Leon Valle, and a young cousin, Doctor Genaro Calderon, one of the numerous family connections; and those, with the Padre Francisco, and Doña Feliz gathered around the bed of the dying child. The father in an agony of grief and vengeful despair, stood at the head, and Doña Isabel, ghostlike and haggard from her long suspense and watching, was on her knees at the side, her eyes fixed upon the face of the child, when suddenly he opened his eyes in a wild stare upon Leon Valle, who stood near the foot of the bed, and faintly, slowly articulated the same agonizing cry, "He will kill me if I tell!" At the moment, as if by an irresistible impulse, Leon stretched out his hand, and placed a finger on the lips of the dying boy. The eyes of Don Gregorio followed it, and then like a thunderbolt hurled through space, he threw himself upon his brother-inlaw, grappling his throat with a deathlike grasp. He had recognized the bruise upon the second finger of the white hand; he had recognized the very hand. Recalled to life. by the excitement of the moment, Norberto started up, and exclaimed in a loud, shrill voice, "Take him away! He cut my hair with his bloody knife! Oh, Uncle Leon, will you kill me?" and fell back in the death agony-the agony that only the priest witnessed, for even Isabel turned to the mortal combat waged between her husband and her brother. Don Gregorio was unarmed, but Leon had managed to draw a knife from his belt. The murderous dagger was poised for a blow, when a woman rushed between the combatants, Don Gregorio was flung bleeding upon the bed, Doña Feliz hurled the dagger which she had grasped with her naked hand into a corner, and Leon Valle rushed like a madman from the room. He was seized, pinioned, thrust like a wild beast into one of the solid stone rooms of the building. Don Gregorio was held by main force from accomplishing his purpose of taking the life of the unnatural bandit ere the bolts were shot upon him. Messengers were despatched in quest of police; but by some misapprehension, or intentional delay on the part of the administrador, were detained till dawn, and just as they were about to set forth, a cry went through the house that the prisoner had escaped. Gregorio Garcia rushed to the room, glanced in with wild, bloodshot eyes, and with unrestrainable fury grasped the arm of his wife. "Traitress," he said in a voice as full of horror as of rage, "you have set free the murderer of your child!" She threw herself on her knees at his feet -he never knew whether to confess or declare her innocence-for Doña Feliz cast herself between them. "It is I who set him free!" she exclaimed "I love the Garcias too well to suffer them to be made a mockery of by the false mercy of such laws as ours. Think you the idol of the bandits would be sacrificed for such a trifle as a child's life? and you, Gregorio Garcia, would you in cold blood stain your hands in the blood of your wife's brother, robber and murderer though he be? He has sworn to me to hide himself forever from the family he has disgraced, under an other name in another land. He has the brand of Cain upon his brow-God will surely bring his doom upon him!" She spoke like a prophetess. The superb assurance upon which she had acted, setting aside all rights of man, and relegating vengeance to the Lord, did more to reconcile Don Gregorio to the escape of his enemy 'than all further reflection, decisive though it was in convincing him that in the disordered and anarchical state of the country, the laws would have shielded rather than punished an offender so popular as was Leon Valle. There was perhaps, too, a comfort in the hidden hope of personal vengeance with which he waited long months to learn the retreat of the man who had done him such foul wrong. Meanwhile the exact facts of the case were never known abroad, and when at last it was rumored that Leon Valle had been shot by a rival guerilla chief and hung to a tree placarded as a traitor and robber, there were few to doubt the story, or to make more than a passing comment on the hard necessities of war. There seemed so much poetic justice in it, that Gregorio Garcia who was near the end of the disease contracted through exposure and mental agony, did not for a moment doubt it, and died almost content. Indeed the circumstances were so It was at that time that Doña Isabel began to demand tidings of all who came to her door, and a suspicion entered her mind which became a certainty upon the night our story opened, but which no subsequent event had tended to confirm. And these are the strange emotions and experiences that made Doña Isabel what her full womanhood found her, and, with others of her later life, rendered possible and natural the bitter suspense and fear that held her the long night through, a watcher at the door of one who as others had done might find a means to pierce her heart and wound her pride, if not to waken her affections. Louise Palmer Heaven. [CONTINUED IN NEXT NUMBER.] THE WORKS OF THOMAS MIDDLETON.' These are dainty volumes, whose elegant, cream-tinted paper, clear type, and luxurious margins, speedily engage the attention of the book-lover. The name of Thomas Middleton, Gent., of whom the vera effigies greets us at the opening, is included in the list of those who are called the great dramatists of the Elizabethan age, whose works The works of Thomas Middleton. Edited by A. N. Bullen, B. A., in eight volumes. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin, and Company. 1886. For sale in San Francisco by Chilion Beach. are found upon the shelves of all true lovers and students of dramatic literature. It would seem an act of presumption after the reputation of an author has survived the passage of almost three centuries to appear to question his lor.ger immortality. As a bit of literary history many a name has come to us from beyond the beginning of the Christian era, but the works of the author have passed to that Nirvana to which they doubtless belong; and it must be true, that while the fame of most writers is but ephemeral, there will come an end at last, to the publication and reading even of those works that have continued for two or three centuries, a merely library existence, leaving to survive only such as are of the generation of those few great souls that were born to live forever. It was The works of Middleton were, as far as ascertained, edited in 1840, by Alexander Dyce, one of the ablest of literary editors, in an edition of five volumes. apparently because that edition was out of print, that the able editor of this edition says that "the need of a new edition was keenly felt," and so, as we are informed upon an early page in a publisher's notice, "three hundred and fifty copies of this edition have been printed and the type distributed. No more will be published." The italics are the publisher's. It would scarcely appear that the want of a new edition was keenly felt by a very large portion of the reading, or even the studious public. We do not know but that the italicised sentence may be worldly and everlasting truth. Middleton was the sole author of fifteen dramas, the joint author with Phillip Massinger and William Rowley of three, with Thomas Dekker of one, with Ben. Jonson and John Fletcher of one, and with William Rowley of two. The literary partnerships of Middleton with dramatists who have achieved as great names as these, indicate the high esteem in which he was held by contemporaries, and justify the expectancy with which his name commenced the voyage to posterity. The distinction and fame of the mere dramatist is among his contemporaries, and is transient. The times and the manners change; the topics of interest in which are found merely dramatic situations are but short-lived; and the play, whether comedy or tragedy, which is simply a drama, is equally as short-lived, and its fame but as the perfume of to-day's garland. The people who come to the playhouse in the next century find the language antiquated, the manners out of fashion, the wit musty and ill-flavored. The number of plays that for mere dramatic interest hold the stage today, that have come to us from another century, is limited almost to the fingers of one's hand. There is a quality, however, that determines the lasting literary existence of anything written for the stage. That quality is poetry, the finer way of uttering beautiful ideas. The infusion of its spirit embalms the otherwise perishable drama, and the fullness of that embalming determines the measure of its immortality. Thomas Middleton was born about 1570, and died in 1627. One of his name was admitted a member of Gray's Inn in 1593, and it is claimed that it was he who was afterwards the dramatist. Very little is absolutely known of this author, except that he was the author of the works now re-published; that in 1620 he was appointed to the office of City Chronologer of London, to which, upon his death, Ben. Jonson succeeded; and that he was imprisoned in 1624 for personating His Majesty, the King of Spain, Gondomar, the Spanish Ambassador, and others in the comedy of "The Game of Chess," and for inserting therein passages found to be "offensive and scandalous." A copy of that play, preserved in the Dyce Library at South Kensington, has the following manuscript notes: "After nyne dayes wherein I have heard some of the actors say they took fiveteene hundred pounde, the spanish faction being prevalent, gott it supprest, the chief actors and the Poett Mr. Thomas Middleton that writt it committed to prison, where hee lay some time, and at last gott oute upon this petition presented to King James. "A harmles game; coyn'd only for delight |