n--women, when they have overstepped the
barriers of their natural delicacy, become more lawless and cruel than
the most hardened of men. An old hag was, with wanton mockery, striving
to close the eyes of the warrior; another was trampling under her foot
the cross which she had wrenched from his breast; and a dirty urchin was
rending his venerable locks, whilst some miscreants, not satisfied with
these profanations, in base revenge plunged their weapons into the
lifeless clay. But still there were some whom the great Aguilar inspired
with terrors even in death, and they shrunk from the inanimate corpse,
as if it were ready to start into life, and wreak vengeance for the
outrages sustained. Flushed with indignation at the sight, El Feri soon
dispersed the vile and motley crowd.

"Base, pitiful wretches," he cried in anger, "it well becomes your
cowardly nature thus to insult in death, the man you dared not look on
in life. Aye, quench your valour on that unconscious body, for those
weapons are unworthy of warring against the living, which cannot
respect the dead. Avaunt, miscreants! tempt no further my just anger."

The affrighted crew shrunk back in confusion, but one more daring than
the rest ventured to exclaim--

"He was the mortal foe of the Moors, and of El Feri de Benastepar----"

"In life he was," sternly replied El Feri; "but death reconciles the
bitterest enemy--for enmity must lose its fire in the cold precincts of
the grave."

"The Moor and the Christian," retorted gruffly the other, "even in
death, must be irreconcileable; even in the frost of the sepulchre, the
hate of such foes must not be extinguished.

"Cease, miscreant!" fiercely returned El Feri, "or by the mighty Allah,
a single word more, and a blow from the scymitar of El Feri shall be thy
only answer."

In speechless terror they all retreated, when El Feri turning to one of
his followers--

"Do you, Moraz," said he, "and some of your brave companions, pay the
last honors to the noble Don Alonso de Aguilar."

The Moors obeyed the orders of their chief, and forthwith a grave was
dug at the foot of the rock. No funeral pomp--no military honors graced
the obsequies of the great Aguilar--no chaunting priest was there to
rehearse the service of the dead--no friend to weep over his loss--no
grateful dependant to raise the closed hands in prayer to heaven; but in
silence his enemies laid him in his humble grave, and strewed the earth
over his wa