lay."

"Well, here is our dear, darling Dolores," said Katie, who by this
time had become great friends with the dark-eyed Spanish beauty.
"Look at her! She doesn't mope."

"Oh no, I doesn't what you call--mopes," said Dolores, in her pretty
broken English. "I see no causa to mopes."

"But you're a prisoner as much as I am."

"Oh si--but thees is a land that I have a quaintance with: I know
thees land--thees art."

"Have you ever been here before?"

"Si--yes. I lif here once when a child."

"Oh, you lived here," said Katie. "Well, now, do you know, I call
that awfully funny."

"My padre--he lif here in thees castello. I lif here one time--one
anno--one year, in thees castello."

"What! here in this castle?"

"Yes, here. The padre--he had grand flocks of the merino sheeps--to
cultivate--to feed them in the pasturas--the sheep--one--ten--twenty
thousand--the sheep. And he had thousand men shepherds--and he lif
here in thees castello to see over the flocks. But he was away among
the flocks alia the times. And me, and the madre, and the domesticos,
we all did lif here, and it seems to me like homes."

"But that must have been long ago?"

"Oh, long, long ago. I was vara leetl--a child; and it was long ago.
Then the padre went to Cuba."

"Cuba! What! have you been there?"

"Oh, many, many years."

"Across the Atlantic--far away in Cuba?"

"Far, far away," said Dolores, her sweet voice rising to a plaintive
note; "far away--in Cuba--oh, many, many years! And there the padre
had a plantation, and was rich; but the insurrection it did break
out, and he was killed."

Dolores stopped and wiped her eyes. Katie looked at her, and her own
eyes overflowed with tears of tender sympathy.

"Oh, how sad!" she said. "I had no idea."

Dolores drew a long breath.

"Yes; he died, the good, tender padre; and madre and me be left
all--all--all--alone--alone--in the cruele world. And the rebel came,
and the soldiers, and oh, how they did fight! And the slaves, they
did all run away--all--all--all--away; and the trees and fruits all
destroy; and the houses all burn up in one gran' conflagration; and
it was one kind, good American that did help us to fly; or we
never--never would be able to lif. So we did come back to our patria
poor, and we had to lif poor in Valencia. I told you I was lifing in
Valencia when I left that place to come on thees travel."

"I suppose," said Katie, "since you lived in this castle once, yo