out to play in the adjoining cemetery. Suppose that for this lack
of reverence a ferocious mob seized your sons, subjected them to a
court-martial, charged them falsely with the demolition of
sepulchres--sepulchres whose crystals are untouched even now. Imagine
them brought before a court-martial and absolved, and then imagine these
children dragged by the mob, disappointed of their prey, before another
military council, who under terror condemned eight to death and the
remainder to the galleys. There were forty-four children, and the kind
council drew lots to decide which of them should be shot. Two brothers
were drawn, but even the stony hearts of the so-called judges thought
that it would be going rather too far to rob one father of his two sons;
so one was discharged, and another substituted because older than the
rest. This incredible, unprecedented crime yet goes unpunished."

[K] He died in the following November at Madrid.

[L] "I have, since the beginning of the present session of Congress,
communicated to the House of Representatives, upon their request, an
account of the steps which I had taken in the hope of securing to the
people of Cuba the blessings and the right of independent
self-government. These efforts failed, but not without an assurance from
Spain that the good offices of this government might still avail for the
objects to which they had been addressed. It is stated, on what I
believe to be good authority, that Cuban bonds have been prepared to a
large amount, whose payment is made dependent upon the recognition by
the United States of either Cuban belligerency or independence. The
object of making their value thus contingent upon the action of this
government is a subject for serious reflection." (_President Grant's
message, June, 1870._) Suggestive statements, indicating how powerful
the interference of our government may be! It would more than aught else
give the Spanish cabinet strength in inducing the Cortes to endorse it
in high-handed measures against the moneyed slave-holding, slave-dealing
clique in Havana, which is the root of all evil there.

PROBATIONER LEONHARD;

OR, THREE NIGHTS IN THE HAPPY VALLEY.

CHAPTER X.

THE ADVANTAGE OF A DEBTOR.

The house to which Spener's steps now turned was the sixth one below
Loretz's, on the same narrow street facing the stream--the long white
house with a deep porch in which young men might often be seen smoking.
Spener had given it