ce given over to the Spaniard. Here
were still his forbidding abodes of concrete and adobe, standing
cold and indomitable against the century. From the murky fissure,
the eye saw, flung against the sky, the tangled filigree of
his Moorish balconies. Through stone archways breaths of dead,
vault-chilled air coughed upon him; his feet struck jingling
iron rings in staples stone-buried for half a cycle. Along these
paltry avenues had swaggered the arrogant Don, had caracoled and
serenaded and blustered while the tomahawk and the pioneer's rifle
were already uplifted to expel him from a continent. And Tansey,
stumbling through this old-world dust, looked up, dark as it was,
and saw Andalusian beauties glimmering on the balconies. Some of
them were laughing and listening to the goblin music that still
followed; others harked fearfully through the night, trying to catch
the hoof beats of caballeros whose last echoes from those stones had
died away a century ago. Those women were silent, but Tansey heard
the jangle of horseless bridle-bits, the whirr of riderless rowels,
and, now and then, a muttered malediction in a foreign tongue. But
he was not frightened. Shadows, nor shadows of sounds could daunt
him. Afraid? No. Afraid of Mother Peek? Afraid to face the girl
of his heart? Afraid of tipsy Captain Peek? Nay! nor of these
apparitions, nor of that spectral singing that always pursued him.
Singing! He would show them! He lifted up a strong and untuneful
voice:

"When you hear them bells go tingalingling,"

serving notice upon those mysterious agencies that if it should come
to a face-to-face encounter

"There'll be a hot time
In the old town
To-night!"

How long Tansey consumed in treading this haunted byway was not
clear to him, but in time he emerged into a more commodious avenue.
When within a few yards of the corner he perceived, through a
window, that a small confectionary of mean appearance was set in
the angle. His same glance that estimated its meagre equipment, its
cheap soda-water fountain and stock of tobacco and sweets, took
cognizance of Captain Peek within lighting a cigar at a swinging
gaslight.

As Tansey rounded the corner Captain Peek came out, and they met
_vis-a-vis_. An exultant joy filled Tansey when he found himself
sustaining the encounter with implicit courage. Peek, indeed! He
raised his hand, and snapped his fingers loudly.

It was Peek himself who quailed guiltily b