hould have this priceless treasure itself if she would tell him
where the chiefs were meeting. To this act of treachery she finally
agreed on condition that her lover, who was one of the chiefs, should
be pardoned. That evening she carried bread and fruit to the lake,
and sitting on the bank sang loudly for some minutes. The Spanish
soldiers, who were watching from the shrubbery, were astonished to
see a man rise like a seal from the water, swim to the shore, take
the parcel from the girl's hands, exchange a few words with her,
and disappear again beneath the surface. The song was a signal for
one of the men to come out and receive the food, and it was heard
through a crevice in the cave roof. Next day the girl sang again,
and the whole company left the cave. They had no sooner gained the
shore than the Spaniards sprang from the shrubbery and surrounded
them. As they were led away to death, one of the chiefs levelled
his finger at the girl and said, "I am going to a land of peace. You
will never find the way to it." Her lover cast her off with bitter
reproaches. Then, as the murderous volley pealed across the fields,
and the rebellion was ended, her heart broke. She still sits at the
lakeside in the evening, weeping over her comb.

How a Dutchman Helped the Spaniards

Had any Dutchman been charged with intending a kindness to the dons
when his country was smarting under the Spanish scourge he would
have offered the life of some distant relative to disprove the
accusation. Without a guess that he could be injuring his own land
and enriching that of his enemy, an innocent magistrate of Amsterdam
did that for which he would afterward have submitted to the abuse of
his friends, and if sackcloth and ashes had been in vogue he would
have worn them. It all came about through his wish to be pleasant
to a Frenchman, the same being Louis XIV. He sent to this monarch a
curiosity in the form of a young coffee-tree, thinking, no doubt, that
a warm corner could be found for it in the Jardin des Plantes among
the orchids and cacti, and little recking that Louis had a Spanish
father-in-law. At that time Holland enjoyed, in her colonies, almost
a monopoly of the coffee trade of the world, but that one little tree
broke her monopoly, just as one little leak in her dikes led to the
eating away of miles of earthen wall and an in-rush and devastation
of the sea.

For Louis was more clever than some other kings, almost clever en