existences, it takes us out with equal
suddenness so that we scarcely know whether they were real or mere
imaginings of an idle hour: the Fates have a passion for the unfinished
sketch and seldom trouble to unravel the threads which they have so
laboriously entangled. The little scene brought another to my mind. When
I was 'on accident duty' at St. Thomas's Hospital a man brought his son
with a broken leg; it was hard luck on the little chap, for he was
seated peacefully on the ground when another boy, climbing a wall, fell
on him and did the damage. When I returned him, duly bandaged, to his
father's arms, the child bent forward and put out his lips for a kiss,
saying good-night with babyish pronunciation. The father and the
attendant nurse laughed, and I, being young, was confused and blushed
profusely. They went away and somehow or other I never saw them again. I
wonder if the pretty child, (he must be eight or ten now,) remembers
kissing a very weary medical student, who had not slept much for several
days, and was dead tired. Probably he has quite forgotten that he ever
broke his leg. And I suppose no recollection remains with the pretty
girl in the farm of a foreigner riding mysteriously through the
olive-groves, to whom she gave shelter and a bunch of violets.

* * *

I came at last to the end of the trees and found then that a mighty wind
had risen, which blew straight in my teeth. It was hard work to ride
against it, but I saw a white town in the distance, on a hill; and made
for it, rejoicing in the prospect. Presently I met some men shooting,
and to make sure, asked whether the houses I saw really were Marchena.

'Oh no,' said one. 'You've come quite out of the way. That is Fuentes.
Marchena is over there, beyond the hill.'

My heart sank, for I was growing very hungry, and I asked whether I
could not get shelter at Fuentes. They shrugged their shoulders and
advised me to go to Marchena, which had a small inn. I went on for
several hours, battling against the wind, bent down in order to expose
myself as little as possible, over a huge expanse of pasture land, a
desert of green. I reached the crest of the hill, but there was no sign
of Marchena, unless that was a tower which I saw very far away, its
summit just rising above the horizon.

I was ravenous. My saddle-bags contained spaces for a bottle and for
food; and I cursed my folly in stuffing them with such useless
refinements of civilisation as hair-br