safeguard protected
him? The next moment her conscience pricked her, when her father's
image rose before her, grown gray in service, and seamed with scars,
yet no safer by all his dangers past than the last recruit, and she
walked slowly forth from the Franciscan church with sadder and more
solemn impressions of the reality and imminence of death than could be
generated by all that vast array of grinning skulls.

It was growing late, and they turned toward the _estalagem_. As they
strolled on, L'Isle, in the same strain of thought which had last
occupied them, said: "War is essentially a greedy thing, a great and
speedy consumer of what has been slowly produced in peace. We hear of
veteran armies, but an army of veterans does not, perhaps never
existed. We collect materials and munitions of war, expecting to
expend them in military operations; but we are not aware, until we
have tried it, how close a parallel there is between the fates of the
inanimate and the living constituents that furnish forth an army for
the field. It is not the sword chiefly that kills; the hospital
swallows more than the battle-field. After a few campaigns, what has
been falsely called the skeleton, but is, in truth, the soul of an
army, the remnant of experienced officers and tried soldiers, only
remains, and new flesh, blood, and bones must be provided for this
soul, in the shape of new levies. When we see an old soldier glorying
in his score of campaigns, we should call to mind the score of youths
prematurely covered by the sod."

"Few, then," said Lady Mabel, "can enjoy Gonsalvo of Cordova's
fortune. On retiring to a monastery, he avowed that every soldier
needed for repentance an interval of some years between his life and
his death."

"The great captain's conscience must have pricked him," said L'Isle,
"when he made that speech. An unjust war, or a war unjustly waged, lay
heavy on him. A soldier knows the likelihood of his dying in his
vocation. If he think it criminal, let him abandon it. Up to this day
my conscience has not troubled me on that score. War, always an evil,
is often a necessity; and I wonder whether, after an hundred years of
peace, we would not find nations worse and more worthless than they
now are."

Mrs. Shortridge now called their attention to the number of storks in
the air. The sun had set, and these grave birds were seeking their
roosts; every tower of church and monastery affording a domicil to
some feathered