ced to grant her bulwarks as a protection to liberty. A small clear
stream ran through the valley, sparkling with the last smile of the
departing day; and ever and anon, from the scattered shrubs and the
fragrant herbage, came the vesper music of the birds, and the hum of the
wild bee.

Parched with thirst, and drooping with fatigue, the wanderers sprung
forward with one simultaneous cry of joy to the glassy and refreshing
wave which burst so unexpectedly upon them: and it was resolved that
they should remain for some hours in a spot where all things invited
them to the repose they so imperiously required. They flung themselves
at once upon the grass; and such was their exhaustion, that rest was
almost synonymous with sleep. Falkland alone could not immediately
forget himself in repose: the face of his uncle, ghastly and disfigured,
glared upon his eyes whenever he closed them. Just, however, as he was
sinking into an unquiet and fitful doze, he heard steps approaching: he
started up, and perceived two men, one a peasant, the other in the dress
of a hermit. They were the first human beings the wanderers had met;
and when Falkland gave the alarm to Riego, who slept beside him, it was
immediately proposed to detain them as guides to the town of Carolina,
where Riego had hopes of finding effectual assistance, or the means
of ultimate escape. The hermit and his companion refused, with much
vehemence, the office imposed upon them; but Riego ordered them to be
forcibly detained. He had afterwards reason bitterly to regret this
compulsion.

Midnight came on in all the gorgeous beauty of a southern heaven, and
beneath its stars they renewed their march. As Falkland rode by the side
of Riego, the latter said to him in a low voice, "There is yet escape
for you and my followers: none for me: they have set a price on my
head, and the moment I leave these mountains, I enter upon my own
destruction." "No, Rafael!" replied Falkland; "you can yet fly to
England, that asylum of the free, though ally of the despotic; the
abettor of tyranny, but the shelter of its victims!" Riego answered,
with the same faint and dejected tone, "I care not now what becomes of
me! I have lived solely for Freedom; I have made her my mistress, my
hope, my dream: I have no existence but in her. With the last effort
of my country let me perish also! I have lived to view liberty not only
defeated, but derided: I have seen its efforts not aided, but mocked. In