, had struck him in the calf of
the right leg, fracturing the small bone and dropping two or three inches
lower in the flesh.

The wound appeared but trifling,--the slight hurt of a spent ball,--but the
surgeons, disputing as to the policy of extracting the ball, did nothing,
not even dressing the wound till the next morning. It was of slight
importance, they said. He would be on horseback within a month, perhaps in
two weeks. The wounded man was not so sanguine.

"The pitcher goes to the well till it breaks at last," he said. "Two
months more and I would not have cared for any sort of wound."

Those two months might have put Don Carlos on the throne and changed the
history of Spain. In eleven days the general was dead and a change had
come over the spirit of affairs. The operations against Bilboa languished,
the garrison regained their courage, the plan of storming the place was
set aside, the queen's troops, cheered by tidings of the death of the
"terrible Zumalacarregui," took heart again and marched to the relief of
the city. Their advance ended in the siege being raised, and in the first
encounter after the death of their redoubtable chief the Carlists met with
defeat. The decline in the fortunes of Don Carlos had begun. One man had
lifted them from the lowest ebb almost to the pinnacle of success. With
the fall of Zumalacarregui Carlism received a death-blow in Spain, for
there is little hope that one of this dynasty of claimants will ever reach
the throne.

MANILA AND SANTIAGO.

The record of Spain has not been glorious at sea. She has but one great
victory, that of Lepanto, to offer in evidence against a number of great
defeats, such as those of the Armada, Cape St. Vincent, and Trafalgar. In
1898 two more defeats, those of Manila and Santiago, were added to the
list, and with an account of these our series of tales from Spanish
history may fitly close.

Exactly three centuries passed from the death of Philip II. (1598) to that
of the war with the United States, and during that long period the tide of
Spanish affairs moved steadily downward. At its beginning Spain exercised
a powerful influence over European politics; at its end she was looked
upon with disdainful pity and had no longer a voice in continental
affairs. Such was the inevitable result of the weakness and lack of
statesmanship with which the kingdom had been misgoverned during the
greater part of this period.

In her colonial affai