n clave to its proper concave. Two
pairs of brawny knees unsettled their knitted braces, and bent limply
beneath their loads of incarnate wickedness swaying unsteadily above.
With clenched hands and streaming eyes these wretched men prayed
silently. At this supreme moment an American gentleman sitting by,
with his heels upon a rotted oaken stump, tilted back his chair, laid
down his newspaper, and began operating upon a half-eaten apple-pie.
One glance at the title of that print--one look at that calm angular
face clasped in its crescent of crisp crust--and Don Hemstitch Blodoza
reeled, staggered like an exhausted spinning-top. He spread his
baffled hand upon his eyes, and sank heavily to earth!

"Saved! saved!" shrieked the penitent conspirators, springing to their
feet. The far deeps of the forest whispered in consultation, and a
distant hillside echoed back the words. "Saved!" sang the
rocks--"Saved!" the glad birds twittered from the leaves above. The
hare that Don Hemstitch Blodoza's poniard would have severed limped
awkwardly but confidently about, saying, "Saved!" as well as he knew
how.

Explanation is needless. The American gentleman was the Special
Correspondent of the "New York Herald." It is tolerably well known
that except beneath his searching eye no considerable event can
occur--and his whole attention was focused upon that apple-pie!

That is how Spanish vengeance was balked of its issue.

* * * * *

MRS. DENNISON'S HEAD.

While I was employed in the Bank of Loan and Discount (said Mr.
Applegarth, smiling the smile with which he always prefaced a nice old
story), there was another clerk there, named Dennison--a quiet,
reticent fellow, the very soul of truth, and a great favourite with
us all. He always wore crape on his hat, and once when asked for whom
he was in mourning he replied his wife, and seemed much affected. We
all expressed our sympathy as delicately as possible, and no more was
said upon the subject. Some weeks after this he seemed to have arrived
at that stage of tempered grief at which it becomes a relief to give
sorrow words--to speak of the departed one to sympathizing friends;
for one day he voluntarily began talking of his bereavement, and of
the terrible calamity by which his wife had been deprived of her head!

This sharpened our curiosity to the keenest edge; but of course we
controlled it, hoping he would volunteer some further informat