eady to return to Sevilla.

I must tell you that during this fortnight I did not receive a single
letter from Blanca, though I wrote her six. I started at once for
Sevilla, arriving in that city on the thirtieth of April, and went at
once to the hotel where we had first met.

I learned that Blanca had left there two days after my departure
without telling anyone her destination.

Imagine my indignation, my disappointment, my suffering. She went away
without even leaving a line for me, without telling me whither she was
going. It never occurred to me to remain in Sevilla until the fifteenth
of May to ascertain whether she would return on that date. Three days
later I took up my court work and strove to forget her.

* * * * *

A few moments after my friend Zarco finished the story, we arrived at
the cemetery.

This is only a small plot of ground covered with a veritable forest of
crosses and surrounded by a low stone wall. As often happens in Spain,
when the cemeteries are very small, it is necessary to dig up one
coffin in order to lower another. Those thus disinterred are thrown in
a heap in a corner of the cemetery, where skulls and bones are piled up
like a haystack. As we were passing, Zarco and I looked at the skulls,
wondering to whom they could have belonged, to rich or poor, noble or
plebeian.

Suddenly the judge bent down, and picking up a skull, exclaimed in
astonishment:

"Look here, my friend, what is this? It is surely a nail!"

Yes, a long nail had been driven in the top of the skull which he held
in his hand. The nail had been driven into the head, and the point had
penetrated what had been the roof of the mouth.

What could this mean? He began to conjecture, and soon both of us felt
filled with horror.

"I recognize the hand of Providence!" exclaimed the judge. "A terrible
crime has evidently been committed, and would never have come to light
had it not been for this accident. I shall do my duty, and will not
rest until I have brought the assassin to the scaffold."

III

My friend Zarco was one of the keenest criminal judges in Spain. Within
a very few days he discovered that the corpse to which this skull
belonged had been buried in a rough wooden coffin which the grave
digger had taken home with him, intending to use it for firewood.
Fortunately, the man had not yet burned it up, and on the lid the judge
managed to decipher the initials: "A.G.R." tog