r mother's gossip, your own playmate?"

The general turned full upon her, with the quick indignant threat of one
who considers himself duped, in his countenance. It had gone ill with La
Giralda if she had not been able to prove her case. But she held
something in her hand, the sight of which brought the butcher of Tortosa
down from his saddle as quickly as if a Cristino bullet had pierced him
to the heart.

La Giralda was holding out to him an old string of beads, simply carved
out of some brown oriental nut, but so worn away by use that the
stringing had almost cut through the hard and polished shell.

"My mother's rosary!" he cried, and sinking on his knees, he devoutly
received and kissed it. He abode thus a moment looking up to the
sky--he, the man who had waded in blood during six years of bitter
warfare. He kissed the worn beads one by one and wept. They were his
mother's way to heaven. And he did not know a better. In which perchance
he was right.

"Whence gat you this?" cried Cabrera, rising sharply as a thought struck
him; "my mother never would have parted with these in her life--you
plundered it from her body after her death! Quick, out with your story,
or you die!"

"Nay, little foster-son," said La Giralda, "I was indeed with your
mother at the last--when she was shot by Nogueras, and five minutes
before she died she gave her rosary into my hands to convey to you.
'Take this to my son,' she said, 'and bid him never forget his mother,
nor to say his prayers night and morn. Bid him swear it on these sacred
beads!' So I have brought them to you. She kissed them before she died.
At the risk of my life have I brought it."

"And these," said Cabrera--"do you know these dogs, La Giralda?"

He pointed to the four men who still stood by the wall, the firing party
at attention before them, and the eyes of all on the next wave of the
general's hand which would mean life or death.

La Giralda drew a quick breath. Would the hold she had over him be
sufficient for what she was about to ask? He was a fierce man and a
cruel, this Ramon Cabrera, who loved naught in the world except his
mother, and had gained his present ascendency in the councils of Don
Carlos by the unbending and consistent ferocity of his conduct.

"These are no traitors, General," she said; "they are true men, and deep
in the councils of the cause."

She bent and whispered in his ear words which others could not hear. The
face of the Carlist