bly the two fairest in Spain at that
moment--being by denomination Claire Agnew and Valentine la Nina. In the
rear a huge, vaguely misshapen giant in shepherd's dress--fleece-coat
and cap of wolf-skin, with the ears sticking out quaintly on either
side, herded the entire party. He seemed to be assuring himself that it
was not followed or spied upon.

Beneath them, in the grey of the mist, as they turned a corner of the
blue-black Sierra, there suddenly loomed up the snow-sprinkled roofs of
a vast building--palace, monastery, tomb--what not. It was the Escorial,
built by Philip of Spain to commemorate the famous victory of St.
Quentain, and completed just in time to receive, as a cold water
baptism, the news of the defeat of his Great Armada.

The pile of the Escorial seemed too huge to be wrought by man--a part of
the mountain rather, hewn by giant hands into domes and doors and
fantastic pinnacles. Indeed, the grey snow-showers, mere scufflings of
sleet and hail, drifting low and ponderous, treated it as part of the
Sierra, one moment whitening it--then, the sun coming out with Spanish
fierceness for a few minutes, lo! vast roofs of blue slate would show
through, glistening like polished steel.

And a king dwelt there--not discrowned, but still the mightiest on the
earth. In spite of his defeats, in spite of his solitude, his broken
purposes, his doubtful future, his empty exchequer, his ruined health,
and the Valley of the Shadow of Death opening before him, there was
nothing on earth--not pope nor prelate, not unscrupulous queen nor
victorious fleet, not even the tempests which had blown his great Armada
upon the inhospitable rocks of Ireland--that could subdue his stubborn
will. He warred for Holy Church against the Pope. He claimed the throne
of France from the son of Saint Louis. Once King of England, he held the
title to the last, and in defence of it broke his power against the
oaken bulwarks of that stiff-necked isle.

In his youth a man of as many marriages, secret and open, as Henry VIII.
himself, he had been compelled to imprison and perhaps to suppress his
son Don Carlos. The English ambassadors found him a man of domestic
virtues. Yet the sole daughter who cherished him he sacrificed in a
moment to his dynastic projects. And the other? Well, there is something
to be said concerning that other.

Philip II. dwelt in the Escorial as in a fenced city. But Valentine la
Nina had a master-key to unlock all d