ccasion to the home of a patriot family,
Mora by name, to arrest or kill the patriots he had heard were stopping
there; but, finding the men all absent, he wreaked his vengeance and
thirst for blood by butchering the two Mora sisters and burning the
house over their bodies.

PEACE AND FAIR PROMISES.

At last, Spain, seeing that she could neither induce the Cubans to
surrender nor draw them into a decisive battle; and finding,
furthermore, that her army of 200,000 men was likely to be annihilated
by death, disease, and patriot bullets, made overtures, which, by
promising many privileges to the people that they had not before
enjoyed, effected a peace. As a result of this war, slavery was
abolished in the island; but Spain's promises for fair and equitable
government were repudiated, and the civil powers became more
extortionate and severe than ever. This war laid a heavy debt upon
Spain, and Cuba was taxed inordinately. The people soon saw that they
had been duped. The world looked upon Cuba and Spain as at peace. To the
outsider the surface was placid, but underneath "the waters were
troubled." Such heroic spirits as Generals Calixto Garcia, Jose Marti,
Antonio Maceo, and Maximo Gomez, leaders in the ten years' struggle,
still lived, though scattered far apart, and in their hearts bore a load
of righteous wrath against their treacherous foe. While such men lived
and such conditions existed another conflict was inevitable.

THE LAST GREAT STRUGGLE FOR FREEDOM.

It was on February 24, 1895, that the last revolution of the Cuban
patriots began. Spain had heard the mutterings of the coming storm, and
hoped to stay it by visiting with severe punishment every Cuban
suspected of patriotic affiliations. Antonio Maceo, a mulatto, but a man
of fortune and education, a veteran of the ten years' war, and a Cuban
by birth, was banished to San Domingo. There were other exiles in Key
West, New York, and elsewhere. Jose Marti was the leading spirit in
forming the Cuban Junta in New York and organizing revolutionary clubs
among Cubans everywhere. Antonio Maceo was the first of the old leaders
in the field. He went secretly to Cuba and began organizing the
insurrectionists, and when war was declared the flag of the new
republic, bearing a lone white star in a red field, was flung to the
breeze. Captain-General Calleja declared martial law in the insurgents'
vicinity, and troops were hastily summoned and sent from Spain. The
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