ive revolutionary leader,
was killed in a fight in the province of Havana. Yet, serious as those
misfortunes were deemed to be, they did not discourage the
revolutionaries; on the contrary, they but spurred the latter to more
strenuous efforts, and the brief, and often fragmentary, items of
intelligence which filtered through to them from time to time concerning
the incessant harrying of the Spaniards by Don Hermoso and his active
band of guerrillas were cheering as cordial to them, stimulating them to
emulative feats of daring and enterprise which rapidly reduced Weyler to
the very verge of despair.

Meanwhile the course of events in Cuba was being very keenly watched in
the United States, and was steadily increasing the already dangerous
tension which had been gradually growing between that country and Spain;
and this was further increased by the occurrence of the Rius incident.
Rius, it may be mentioned, was a Cuban, who, like many other natives of
the same island, had resided in the United States, and had deemed it
good policy to secure naturalisation papers as an American, after which
he had returned to Cuba. The Spanish authorities--who may or may not
have had good reason--suspected Rius of being a dangerous person, and
arrested him; whereupon the United States Consul, ever watchful of the
rights of American citizens, promptly demanded that the man should be
immediately brought to trial, and released if no offence could be proved
against him. The machinery of diplomacy is sometimes apt to move a
trifle slowly, and ere it had moved far enough to bring about the
satisfaction of the Consul's demands it was stated that Rius had died
suddenly in prison. This put General Fitzhugh Lee upon his mettle: he
very strongly suspected that there was more in this man's death than met
the eye, and he insisted upon having the body medically examined, with
the result that Rius was found to have been killed by a blow on the back
of the head; while, scratched by a nail on the back of a chair in his
cell, was found a statement to the effect that he was certain the prison
authorities were fully determined to murder him. These ugly facts the
United States Consul promptly reported to Washington, with the result
that the American President immediately ordered him to demand a full
investigation of all the circumstances, promising to back him up in his
demand with all necessary support. As a result of this, the Spanish
authorities, af