hoods, poniards with ornamental hilts, and rapiers polished, thin and light.

But in that bright and shining assemblage of youthful cavaliers and ladies, whom their elders, seated in the high larch chairs which encircled the royal dais, with smiles of joy saw defiling by, there was one woman who attracted attention for her incomparable loveliness, one who had been hailed Queen of Beauty in all the tournaments and courts of love of the period, one whose colors the most valiant knights had adopted as their emblem, one whose charms were the theme of the songs of the troubadours most proficient in the gay science, one toward whom all eyes turned with wonder, for whom all hearts sighed in secret, around whom might be seen gathering with eagerness, like humble vassals in the train of their mistress, the most illustrious scions of the Toledan nobility assembled at the ball that night.

Those presumptive gallants who were continually in the retinue of the Doña Inés de Tordesillas, for such was the name of this celebrated beauty, were never discouraged in their suit despite her haughty and disdainful character. One was emboldened by a smile which he thought he detected on her lips; another, by a gracious look which he deemed he had surprised in her eyes; another, by a flattering word, the slightest sign of preference, or a vague promise. Each in silence cherished the hope that he would be her choice. Yet among them all there were two particularly prominent for their assiduity and devotion, two who to all appearance, if not the acknowledged favorites of the beauty, might claim to be the farthest advanced upon the path to her heart. These two knights, equals in birth, valor and chivalric accomplishments, subjects of the same king and aspirants for the same lady, were Alonso de Carrillo and Lope de Sandoval.

Both were natives of Toledo; together they had first borne arms; and on one and the same day, their eyes meeting those of Doña Inés, both had conceived a hidden and ardent love for her, a love that for some time grew in secrecy and silence, but at length came to an involuntary betrayal of itself in their actions and conversation.

At the tournaments in the Zocodover, at the floral games of the court, whenever opportunity was presented for rivalry in gallantry or wit, both knights had availed themselves of it with eagerness, desirous to win distinction under the eyes of their lady; and that night, impelled doubtless by the same passion, changing their helmets for plumes and their mail for brocade and silk, standing together by the seat where she rested a moment after a turn through the salons, they began to engage in a brilliant contest of exquisite and ingenious phrases or keen and covert epigrams.

The lesser stars of that sparkling constellation, forming a gilded semicircle around the two gallants, laughed and cheered on the delicate strife; and the fair lady, the prize of that word-tournament, approved with a scarcely perceptible smile the flashes of wit, elegantly phrased or full of hidden meaning, whether they fell from the lips of her adorers like a light wave of perfume flattering to her vanity, or leapt forth like a sharp arrow seeking to pierce the opponent in his most vulnerable point, his self-love.

Already with each sally the courtly combat of wit and gallantry was growing fiercer; the phrases were still civil in form, but terse and dry, and in the speaking, accompanied though it was by a slight curving of the lips in semblance of a smile, unconcealable lightnings of the eyes betrayed that repressed anger which raged in the breasts of the rivals.

It was a situation that could not be sustained. The lady, so perceiving, had risen to make another tour of the salons, when an incident occurred that broke down the barrier of formal courtesy which had hitherto restrained the two enamoured youths. Perchance intentionally, perchance through carelessness, Doña Inés had let fall upon her lap one of her perfumed gloves whose golden buttons she had amused herself in pulling off one by one during the conversation. As she rose, the glove slipped between the wide silken plaits of her dress and fell upon the carpet. Seeing it drop, all the knights who formed her brilliant retinue bent eagerly to recover it, disputing with one another the honor of a slight inclination of her head as a reward of their gallantry.

Noting the precipitation with which all stooped to pick up her glove, a half smile of satisfied vanity appeared on the lips of the haughty Doña Inés. With a gesture of general acknowledgment to the cavaliers who had shown such eagerness to serve her, the lady, with a lofty, arrogant mien and scarcely glancing in that direction, reached out her hand for the glove toward Lope and Alonso, the first to reach it. In fact, both youths had seen the glove fall close to their feet, both had stooped with equal haste to pick it up and, on rising, each held it seized by one end. On seeing them immovable, looking silent defiance each upon the other, and both determined not to give up the glove which they had just raised from the floor, the lady uttered a light, involuntary cry, stifled by the murmur of the astonished spectators. The whole presented a threatening scene, that there in the royal castle and in the presence of the king might be designated as a serious breach of courtesy.

Lope and Alonso, notwithstanding, remained motionless, mute, scanning each other from head to foot, showing no sign of the tempest in their souls save by a slight nervous tremor which shivered through their limbs as if they had been attacked by a sudden fever.

The murmurs and exclamations were reaching a climax. The people began to group themselves around the principal actors in the scene. Doña Inés, either bewildered or taking delight in prolonging the situation, was moving to and fro as if seeking refuge or escape from the eyes of the throng whose numbers were continually augmented. Catastrophe now seemed inevitable. The two young men had already exchanged a few words in an undertone, and each, while still with one hand holding the glove in a convulsive grip, seemed instinctively to be seeking with the other the golden hilt of his poniard, when the crowd of spectators respectfully opened and there appeared the king.

His brow was tranquil. There was neither indignation in his countenance nor anger in his bearing.

He surveyed the scene; one glance was sufficient to put him in command of the situation. With all the grace of the most accomplished page, he drew the glove from the young knights’ hands which, as though moved by a spring, opened without difficulty at the touch of their sovereign, and turning to Doña Inés de Tordesillas, who, leaning on the arm of a duenna, seemed about to faint, said with a firm though controlled voice, as he presented the glove:

“Take it, señora, and be careful not to let it fall again, lest when you recover it, you find it stained with blood.”

By the time the king had finished speaking, Doña Inés, we will not undertake to say whether overcome by emotion, or in order to retreat more gracefully from the situation, had swooned in the arms of those about her.

Alonso and Lope, the former crushing in silence between his hands his velvet cap whose plume trailed along the carpet, and the latter biting his lips till the blood came, fixed each other with a stubborn, intense stare.

A stare at that crisis was equivalent to a blow, a glove thrown in the face, a challenge to mortal combat.

II.

At midnight, the king and queen retired to their chamber. The ball was at an end, and the inquisitive folk outside, who, forming groups and circles in the vicinity of the palace, had been impatiently awaiting this moment, ran to station themselves beside the steep road, up in the balconies along the route, and in the central square of the city, known as the Zocodover.

For an hour or two there reigned, at these points and in the adjacent streets, clamor, bustle, activity indescribable. Everywhere might be seen squires caracoling on their richly caparisoned steeds, masters-at-arms with showy vestments full of shields and heraldic devices, drummers dressed in gay colors, soldiers in shining armor, pages in velvet cloaks and plumed hats, footmen who preceded luxurious chairs and litters covered with rich cloth. The great, blazing torches borne by the footmen cast a rosy glow upon the multitude, who, with wondering faces, open mouths and frightened eyes, saw with amazement all the chief nobility of Castile passing by, surrounded on that occasion by fabulous splendor and pomp.

Then, by degrees, the noise and excitement subsided, the stained glass in the lofty ogive windows of the palace ceased to shine, the last cavalcade passed through the close-packed throngs, the rabble in their turn began to disperse in all directions, disappearing among the shadows of the puzzling labyrinth formed by those dark, narrow, tortuous streets, and now the deep silence of the night was broken only by the far-off call of some sentinel, the footsteps of some lingerer whose curiosity had left him to the last, the clang of bolts and bars in closing gates, when on the summit of the stone stairway which leads to the platform of the palace, there appeared a knight, who, after looking on all sides as if seeking some one who should have been expecting him, slowly descended to the Cuesta del Alcazar, by which he took his way toward the Zocodover.

On arriving at the square, he halted a moment and cast a searching glance around. The night was dark, not a star glistened in the sky, nor in all the square could a single light be seen; yet afar off, and in the same direction in which he began to perceive a slight sound as of approaching footsteps, he believed he saw the figure of a man, without doubt the same whom he had seemed to await with such impatience.

The knight who had just quitted the castle for the Zocodover was Alonso Carrillo, who, on account of the post of honor which he held near the person of the king, had been kept on attendance in the royal chamber until that hour. The man coming to meet him out of the shadows of the arcades which surround the square was Lope de Sandoval. When the two knights were face to face, they exchanged a few sentences in suppressed voices.

“I thought you would be expecting me,” said the one.

“I hoped that you would surmise as much,” answered the other.

“Where shall we go?”

“Wherever there can be found four handsbreadth of ground to turn around in and a ray to give us light.”

This briefest of dialogues ended, the two young men plunged into one of the narrow streets leading out from the Zocodover and vanished in the darkness like those phantoms of the night, which, after terrifying for an instant the beholder, dissolve into atoms of mist and are lost in the depth of the shadows.

A long time they went on, traversing the streets of Toledo, seeking a suitable place to end their quarrel, but the darkness of the night was so dense that the duel seemed impossible. Yet both wished to fight and to fight before the whitening of the east; for at dawn the royal hosts were to go forth, and Alonso with them.

So they pressed on, threading at random deserted squares, dusky alleys, long and gloomy passages, till at last they saw shining in the distance a light, a light small and waning, about which the mist formed a circle of ghostly, glimmering lustre.

They had reached the Street of the Christ, and the radiance discernible at one end seemed to come from the small lantern which illuminated then and illuminates still the image that gives the street its name.

On seeing it, both let escape an exclamation of joy and, quickening their steps toward it, were not long in finding themselves near the shrine in which it burned.

An arched recess in the wall, in the depths of which might be seen the image of the Redeemer, nailed to the cross, with a skull at his feet, a rude board covering for protection from the weather, and a small lantern hung by a cord, swaying with the wind and shedding a faint effulgence, constituted the entire shrine. About it clung festoons of ivy which had sprung up among the dark and broken stones forming, as it were, a curtain of verdure.

The cavaliers, after reverently saluting the image of Christ by removing their military caps and murmuring a short prayer, glanced over the ground, threw off their mantles and, each perceiving the other to be ready for the combat and both giving the signal by a slight motion of the head, crossed swords. But scarcely had the blades touched when, before either of the combatants had been able to take a single step or strike a blow, the light suddenly went out, leaving the street plunged in utter darkness. As if moved by the same thought, the two antagonists, on finding themselves surrounded by that instantaneous gloom, took a step backward, lowered the points of their swords to the ground and raised their eyes to the lantern, whose light, a moment before extinguished, began to shine anew at the very instant the duel was suspended.

“It must have been some passing gust that lowered the flame,” exclaimed Carrillo, placing himself again on guard, and giving warning to Lope, who seemed preoccupied.

Lope took a step forward to recover the lost ground, extended his arm and the blades touched once more, but at their touching the light again went out of itself, remaining thus until the swords separated.

“In truth, but this is strange!” murmured Lope, gazing at the lantern which had begun spontaneously to burn again. The gleam, slowly wavering with the wind, spread a tremulous, wonderful radiance over the yellow skull placed at the feet of Christ.

“Bah!” said Alonso, “it must be because the holy woman who has charge of the lamp cheats the devotees and scants the oil, so that the light, almost out, brightens and then darkens again in its dying agony.”

Thus speaking, the impetuous youth placed himself once more in attitude of defence. His opponent did the same; but this time, not only were they enveloped in a thick and impenetrable gloom, but simultaneously there fell upon their ears the deep echo of a mysterious voice like those long sighs of the south-west wind which seems to complain and articulate words as it wanders imprisoned in the crooked, narrow and dim streets of Toledo.

What was uttered by that fearful and superhuman voice never could be learned; but on hearing it, both youths were seized with such profound terror that their swords dropped from their hands, their hair stood on end, and over their bodies, shaken by an involuntary tremor, and down their pallid and distorted brows a cold sweat like that of death began to flow.

The light, for the third time quenched, for the third time shone again and dispelled the dark.

“Ah!” exclaimed Lope, beholding him who was now his opponent, in other days his best friend, astounded like himself, like himself pale and motionless, “God does not mean to permit this combat, for it is a fratricidal contest; because a duel between us is an offence to heaven in whose sight we have sworn a hundred times eternal friendship.” And saying this he threw himself into the arms of Alonso, who clasped him in his own with unspeakable strength and fervor.

III.

Some moments passed during which both youths indulged in every endearment of friendship and love. Alonso spoke first and, in accents touched by the scene which we have just related, exclaimed, addressing his comrade:

“Lope, I know that you love Doña Inés; perhaps not as much as I, but you love her. Since a duel between us is impossible, let us agree to place our fate in her hands. Let us go and seek her, let her decide with free choice which of us shall be the happy one, which the wretched. Her decision shall be respected by both, and he who does not gain her favor shall to-morrow go forth with the King of Toledo and shall seek the comfort of forgetfulness in the excitement of war.”

“Since you wish it, so let it be,” replied Lope.

And arm in arm the two friends took their way toward the cathedral beneath whose shadow, in a palace of which there are now no remains, dwelt Doña Inés de Tordesillas.

It was early dawn, and as some of the kindred of Doña Inés, among them her brothers, were to march the coming day with the royal army, it was not impossible that early in the morning they could gain admittance to her palace.

Inspired by this hope they arrived, at last, at the base of the Gothic tower of the church, but on reaching that point a peculiar noise attracted their attention and, stopping in one of the angles, concealed among the shadows of the lofty buttresses that support the walls, they saw, to their amazement, a man emerging from a window upon the balcony of their lady’s apartments in the palace. He lightly descended to the ground by the help of a rope and, finally, a white figure, Doña Inés undoubtedly, appeared upon the balcony and, leaning over the fretted parapet, exchanged tender phrases of farewell with her mysterious lover.

The first motion of the two youths was to place their hands on their sword-hilts, but checking themselves, as though struck by a common thought, they turned to look on one another, each discerning on the other’s face a look of astonishment so ludicrous that both broke forth into loud laughter, laughter which, rolling on from echo to echo in the silence of the night, resounded through the square even to the palace.

Hearing it, the white figure vanished from the balcony, a noise of slamming doors was heard, and then silence resumed her reign.

On the following day, the queen, seated on a most sumptuous dais, saw defile past her the hosts who were marching to the war against the Moors. At her side were the principal ladies of Toledo. Among them was Doña Inés de Tordesillas on whom this day, as ever, all eyes were bent. But it seemed to her that they wore a different expression from that to which she was accustomed. She would have said that in all the curious looks cast upon her lurked a mocking smile.

This discovery could not but disquiet her, remembering, as she did, the noisy laughter which, the night before, she had thought she heard at a distance in one of the angles of the square, while she was closing her balcony and bidding adieu to her lover; but when she saw among the ranks of the army marching below the dais, sparks of fire glancing from their brilliant armor, and a cloud of dust enveloping them, the two reunited banners of the houses of Carrillo and Sandoval; when she saw the significant smile which the two former rivals, on saluting the queen, directed toward herself, she comprehended all. The blush of shame reddened her face and tears of chagrin glistened in her eyes.

THE WHITE DOE

In truth, it was really that, for very soon after the first hearing of the bell, there came leaping over the thick undergrowth of lavender and thyme, descending to the opposite bank of the rivulet, nearly a hundred lambs white as snow, and behind them appeared their shepherd with his pointed hood drawn over his brows to protect him from the vertical rays of the sun and with his shoulder-bag swung from the end of a stick.

“Speaking of remarkable adventures,” exclaimed on seeing him one of the huntsmen of Don Dionís, addressing his lord, “here is Esteban, the shepherd-lad, who has been now for some time more of a fool than God made him, which was fool enough. He can give us an amusing half-hour by relating the cause of his continual frights.”

“But what is it that happens to this poor devil?” exclaimed Don Dionís with an air of piqued curiosity.

“A mere trifle,” continued the huntsman in a jesting tone. “The case is this—that without having been born on Good Friday, or bearing a birthmark of the cross, or, so far as one can infer from his regular Christian habits, binding himself to the Devil, he finds himself, not knowing why or whence, endowed with the most marvellous faculty that any man ever possessed, unless it be Solomon, who, they say, understood even the language of birds.”

“And with what does this remarkable faculty have to do?”

“It has to do,” pursued the huntsman, “as he affirms, and he swears and forswears it by all that is most sacred, with a conspiracy among the deer which course through these mountains not to leave him in peace, the drollest thing about it being that on more than one occasion he has surprised them in the act of contriving the pranks they were going to play on him and after those tricks had been carried through he has overheard the noisy bursts of laughter with which they applaud them.”

While the huntsman was thus speaking, Constanza, as the beautiful daughter of Don Dionís was named, had drawn near the group of sportsmen and, as she appeared curious to hear the strange experience of Esteban, one of them ran on to the place where the young shepherd was watering his flock and brought him into the presence of his lord, who, to dispel the perturbation and evident embarrassment of the poor peasant, hastened to greet him by name, accompanying the salutation with a benevolent smile.

Esteban was a boy of nineteen or twenty years, robust in build, with a small head sunken between his shoulders, little blue eyes, a wavering, stupid glance like that of albinos, a flat nose, thick, half open lips, low forehead, complexion fair but tanned by the sun, and hair which fell partly over his eyes and partly around his face, in rough red locks like the mane of a sorrel nag.

Such, more or less exactly, was Esteban in point of physique. In respect to his character, it could be asserted without fear of denial on his own part or on that of any one who knew him, that he was an entirely honest, simple-hearted lad, though, like a true peasant, a little suspicious and malicious.

As soon as the shepherd had recovered from his confusion, Don Dionís again addressed him and, in the most serious tone in the world, feigning an extraordinary interest in learning the details of the event to which his huntsman had referred, put to him a multitude of questions to which Esteban began to reply evasively, as if desirous of escaping any discussion of the subject.

Constrained, nevertheless, by the demands of his lord and the entreaties of Constanza, who seemed most curious and eager that the shepherd should relate his astounding adventures, he decided to talk freely, but not without casting a distrustful glance about him as though fearing to be overheard by others than those present, and scratching his head three or four times in the effort to connect his recollections or find the thread of his narrative, before at last he thus began:

“The fact is, my lord, that as a priest of Tarazona to whom, not long ago, I went for help in my troubles, told me, wits don’t serve against the Devil, but mum! finger on lip, many good prayers to Saint Bartholomew—who, none better, knows his knaveries—and let him have his sport; for God, who is just, and sits up thereon high, will see that all comes right in the end.

“Resolved on this course I had decided never again to say a word to any one about it,—no, not for anything; but I will do it to-day to satisfy your curiosity, and in good sooth, if, after all, the Devil calls me to account and goes to troubling me in punishment for my indiscretion, I carry the Holy Gospels sewed inside my sheepskin coat, and with their help, I think that, as at other times, I may make telling use of a cudgel.”

“But, come!” exclaimed Don Dionís, out of patience with the digressions of the shepherd, which it seemed would never end, “let the whys and wherefores go, and come directly to the subject.”

“I am coming to it,” calmly replied Esteban, and after calling together, by dint of a shout and a whistle, the lambs of which he had not lost sight and which were now beginning to scatter over the mountain-side, he scratched his head again and proceeded thus:

“On the one hand, your own continual hunting trips, and on the other, the persistency of those trespassers who, what with snare and what with crossbow, hardly leave a deer alive in twenty days’ journey round about, had, a little time ago, so thinned out the game in these mountains that you could not find a stag in them, not though you would give one of your eyes.

“I was speaking of this in the town, seated in the porch of the church, where after mass on Sunday I was in the habit of joining some laborers who till the soil in Veratón, when some of them said to me:

“ ‘Well, man, I don’t know why it is you fail to run across them, since, as for us, we can give you our word that we don’t once go down to the ploughed land without coming upon their tracks, and it is only three or four days since, without going further back, a herd, which, to judge by their hoof-prints, must have numbered more than twenty, cut down before its time a crop of wheat belonging to the care-taker of the Virgen del Romeral.’

“ ‘And in what direction did the track lead?’ I asked the laborers, with a mind to see if I could fall in with the herd.

“ ‘Toward the Lavender Glen,’ they replied.

“This information did not enter one ear to go out at the other; that very night I posted myself among the poplars. During all its hours I kept hearing here and there, far off as well as near by, the trumpeting of the deer as they called one to another, and from time to time I felt the boughs stirring behind me; but however sharply I looked, the truth is, I could distinguish nothing.

“Nevertheless, at break of day, when I took the lambs to water, at the bank of the stream, about two throws of the sling from the place where we now are, and in so dense a shade of poplars that not even at mid-day is it pierced by a ray of sunshine, I found fresh deer-tracks, broken branches, the stream a little roiled and, what is more peculiar, among the deer-tracks the short prints of tiny feet no larger than the half of the palm of my hand, without any exaggeration.”

On saying this, the boy, instinctively seeming to seek a point of comparison, directed his glance to the foot of Constanza, which peeped from beneath her petticoat shod in a dainty sandal of yellow morocco, but as the eyes of Don Dionís and of some of the huntsmen who were about him followed Esteban’s, the beautiful girl hastened to conceal it, exclaiming in the most natural voice in the world:

“Oh, no! unluckily mine are not so tiny, for feet of this size are found only among the fairies of whom the troubadours sing.”

“But I did not give up with this,” continued the shepherd, when Constanza had finished. “Another time, having concealed myself in another hiding-place by which, undoubtedly, the deer would have to pass in going to the glen, at just about midnight sleep overcame me for a little, although not so much but that I opened my eyes at the very moment when I perceived the branches were stirring around me. I opened my eyes, as I have said; I rose with the utmost caution and, listening intently to the confused murmur, which every moment sounded nearer, I heard in the gusts of wind something like cries and strange songs, bursts of laughter, and three or four distinct voices which talked together with a chatter and gay confusion like that of the young girls at the village when, laughing and jesting on the way, they return in groups from the fountain with their water-jars on their heads.

“As I gathered from the nearness of the voices and close-by crackle of twigs which broke noisily in giving way to that throng of merry maids, they were just about to come out of the thicket on to a little platform formed by a jut of the mountain there where I was hid when, right at my back, as near or nearer than I am to you, I heard a new voice, fresh, fine and vibrant, which said—believe it, señores, it is as true as that I have to die—it said, clearly and distinctly, these very words:

On reaching this point in the shepherd’s story, the bystanders could no longer repress the merriment which for many minutes had been dancing in their eyes and, giving free rein to their mirth, they broke into clamorous laughter. Among the first to begin to laugh, and the last to leave off, were Don Dionís, who, notwithstanding his air of dignity, could not but take part in the general hilarity, and his daughter Constanza, who, every time she looked at Esteban, all in suspense and embarrassment as he was, fell to laughing again like mad till the tears sprang from her eyes.

The shepherd-lad, for his part, although without heeding the effect his story had produced, seemed disturbed and restless, and while the great folk laughed to their hearts’ content at his simple tale, he turned his face from one side to the other with visible signs of fear and as if trying to descry something beyond the intertwined trunks of the trees.

“What is it, Esteban, what is the matter?” asked one of the huntsmen, noting the growing disquietude of the poor boy, who now was fixing his frightened eyes on the laughing daughter of Don Dionís, and again gazing all around him with an expression of astonishment and dull dismay:

“A very strange thing is happening to me,” exclaimed Esteban. “When, after hearing the words which I have just repeated, I quickly sat upright to surprise the person who had spoken them, a doe white as snow leaped from the very copse in which I was hidden and, taking a few prodigious bounds over the tops of the evergreen oaks and mastic trees, sped away, followed by a herd of deer of the natural color; and these, like the white one who was guiding them, did not utter the cries of deer in flight, but laughed with great peals of laughter, whose echo, I could swear, is sounding in my ears at this moment.”

“Bah, bah, Esteban!” exclaimed Don Dionís, with a jesting air, “follow the counsels of the priest of Tarazona; do not talk of your adventures with the joke-loving deer, lest the Devil bring it to pass that in the end you lose the little sense you have, and since now you are provided with the gospels and know the prayer of Saint Bartholomew, return to your lambs which are beginning to scatter through the glen. If the evil spirits tease you again, you know the remedy—Pater Noster and a big stick.”

The shepherd, after putting away in his pouch a half loaf of white bread and a piece of boar’s meat, and in his stomach a mighty draught of wine, which, by order of his lord, one of the grooms gave him, took leave of Don Dionís and his daughter and had scarcely gone four steps when he began whirling his sling, casting stones from it to gather the lambs together.

As, by this time, Don Dionís observed that, what with one diversion and another, the hours of heat were now passed and the light afternoon breeze was beginning to stir the leaves of the poplars and to freshen the fields, he gave orders to his retinue to make ready the horses which were grazing loose in the grove hard by; and when everything was prepared, he signalled to some to slip the leashes, and to others to blow the horns and, sallying forth in a troop from the poplar-grove, took up the interrupted chase.

II.

Among the huntsmen of Don Dionís was one named Garcés, the son of an old servitor of the house and therefore held in high regard by the family.

Garcés was of about the age of Constanza, and from early boyhood had been accustomed to anticipate the least of her wishes and to divine and gratify the lightest of her whims.

He amused himself in his moments of leisure in sharpening with his own hand the pointed arrows of her ivory crossbow; he broke in the colts for her mounts; he trained her favorite hounds in the arts of the chase and tamed her falcons for which he bought at the fairs of Castile red hoods embroidered with gold.

But as for the other huntsmen, the pages and the common folk in the service of Don Dionís, the delicate attentions of Garcés and the marks of esteem with which his superiors distinguished him had caused them to hold him in a sort of general dislike, even to the point of saying, in their envy, that all his assiduous efforts to anticipate the caprices of his mistress revealed the character of a flatterer and a sycophant. Yet there were not wanting those who, more keen-sighted or malicious than the rest, believed that they detected in the young retainer’s devotion signs of an ill-dissembled passion.

If this were really so, the secret love of Garcés had more than abundant excuse in the incomparable charms of Constanza. He must needs have had a breast of stone, and a heart of ice, who could remain unmoved day after day at the side of that woman, peerless in her beauty and her bewitching graces.

The Lily of the Moncayo they called her for twenty leagues around, and well she merited this soubriquet, for she was so exquisite, so white and so delicately flushed that it would seem that God had made her, like the lilies, of snow and gold.

Nevertheless, among the neighboring gentry it was whispered that the beautiful Lady of Veratón was not so pure of blood as she was fair, and that despite her bright tresses and her alabaster complexion, she had had a gipsy mother. How much truth there was in these rumors no one could say, for, in fact, Don Dionís had in his youth led an adventurous life, and after fighting long under the banner of the King of Aragon, from whom he received among other rewards the fief of the Moncayo, had gone to Palestine, where he wandered for some years, finally returning to establish himself in his castle of Veratón with a little daughter born, doubtless, on foreign soil. The only person who could have told anything about the mysterious origin of Constanza, having attended Don Dionís in his travels abroad, was the father of Garcés, and he had died some time since without saying a single word on the subject, not even to his own son who, at various times and with manifestations of great interest, had questioned him.

The temperament of Constanza, with its swift alternations from reserve and melancholy to mirth and glee; the singular vividness of her imagination; her wild moods; her extraordinary ways; even the peculiarity of having eyes and eyebrows black as night while her complexion was white and rosy and her hair as bright as gold, had contributed to furnish food for the gossip of the countryside; and even Garcés himself, who knew her so intimately, had come to the conclusion that his liege lady was something apart and did not resemble the rest of womankind.

Present, as the other huntsmen were, at the narration of Esteban, Garcés was perhaps the only one who listened with genuine curiosity to the details of the shepherd’s incredible adventure; and though he could not help smiling when the lad repeated the words of the white doe, no sooner had he left the grove in which they had taken their siesta, than he began to revolve in his mind the most ridiculous fancies.

“Without doubt this tale of the talking of the deer is a sheer delusion of Esteban’s, who is a perfect simpleton,” the young huntsman said to himself as, mounted on a powerful sorrel, he followed step by step the palfrey of Constanza, who seemed also somewhat preoccupied and was so silent and so withdrawn from the group of hunters as scarcely to take any part in the sport. “Yet who can say that in the story which this poor fool tells there may not be a grain of truth?” thought on the young retainer. “We have seen stranger things in the world, and a white doe may indeed exist, since if we can credit the folk-songs, Saint Hubert, the patron of huntsmen, had one. Oh, if I could take a white doe alive for an offering to my lady!”

Thus thinking and dreaming, Garcés passed the afternoon; and when the sun began to descend behind the neighboring hills, and Don Dionís gave the order to his retinue for the return to the castle, he slipped away from the company unnoticed and went in search of the shepherd through the densest and most entangled coverts of the mountain.

Night had almost completely closed in when Don Dionís arrived at the gates of his castle. Immediately there was placed before him a frugal collation and he sat down with his daughter at the table.

“And Garcés, where is he?” asked Constanza, noticing that her huntsman was not there to serve her as usual.

“We do not know,” the other attendants hastened to reply. “He disappeared from among us near the glen and we have not seen him since.”

At that instant Garcés arrived, all breathless, his forehead still covered with perspiration, but with the most happy and satisfied expression imaginable.

“Pardon me, my lady,” he exclaimed, addressing Constanza, “pardon me if I have been wanting a moment in my duty, but there whence I came at my horse’s best speed, there, as here, I was busied only in your service.”

“In my service?” repeated Constanza. “I do not understand what you mean.”

“Yes, my lady, in your service,” repeated the youth, “for I have ascertained that the white doe really does exist. Besides Esteban, it is vouched for by various other shepherds, who swear they have seen it more than once; and with their aid I hope in God and in my patron Saint Hubert to bring it, living or dead, within three days to you at the castle.”

“Bah! Bah!” exclaimed Constanza with a jesting air, while the derisive laughter, more or less dissimulated, of the bystanders chorused her words. “Have done with midnight hunts and with white does. Bear in mind that the Devil loves to tempt the simple; and if you persist in following at his heels, he will make you a laughing-stock like poor Esteban.”

“My lady,” interrupted Garcés with a broken voice, concealing as far as possible the anger which the merry scoffs of his companions stirred in him, “I have never yet had to do with the Devil and consequently I am not acquainted with his practices; but, for myself, I swear to you that, do all he can, he will not make me an object of laughter, for that is a privilege I know how to tolerate in yourself alone.”

Constanza saw the effect which her mocking had produced on the enamoured youth, but desiring to test his patience to the uttermost, she continued in the same tone:

“And what if, on aiming at the doe, she salutes you with another laugh like that which Esteban heard, or flings it into your very face, and you, hearing those supernatural peals of merriment, let fall your bow from your hands, and before you recover from the fright, the white doe has vanished swifter than lightning—what then?”

“Oh, as for that!” exclaimed Garcés, “be sure that if I can speed a shaft before she is out of bowshot, although she play me more tricks than a juggler; although she speak to me, not in the language of the country, but in Latin like the Abbot of Munilla, she will not get off without an arrow-head in her body.”

At this stage in the conversation, Don Dionís joined in with a forced gravity through which might be detected the entire irony of his words, and began to give the now persecuted boy the most original counsels in the world, in case he should suddenly meet with the demon changed into a white doe.

At each new suggestion of her father, Constanza fixed her eyes on the distressed Garcés, and broke into extravagant laughter, while his fellow-servitors encouraged the jesting with glances of intelligence and ill-disguised delight.

Only with the close of the supper ceased this scene, in which the credulity of the young hunter was, so to speak, the theme on which the general mirth played variations, so that when the cloth was removed and Don Dionís and Constanza had withdrawn to their apartments, and all the inmates of the castle had gone to rest, Garcés remained for a long time irresolute, debating whether, notwithstanding the jeers of his liege lord and lady, he would stand firm to his purpose, or absolutely abandon the enterprise.

“What the devil,” he exclaimed, rousing himself from the state of uncertainty into which he had fallen. “Greater harm than that which has overtaken me cannot come to pass and if, on the other hand, what Esteban has told us is true, oh, then, how sweet will be the taste of my triumph!”

Thus speaking, he fitted a shaft to his crossbow—not without having made the sign of the cross on the point of the arrow—and swinging it over his shoulder, he directed his steps toward the postern gate of the castle to take the mountain path.

When Garcés reached the glen and the point where, according to the instructions of Esteban, he was to lie in wait for the appearance of the deer, the moon was slowly rising behind the neighboring mountains.

Like a good hunter, well-practised in his craft, he spent a considerable time, before selecting a suitable place for an ambush, in going to and fro, scanning the byways and paths thereabouts, the grouping of the trees, the irregularities of the ground, the curves of the river and the depth of its waters.

At last, after completing this minute examination of the locality, he hid himself upon a sloping bank near some black poplars whose high and interlacing tops cast a dark shadow, and at whose feet grew a clump of mastic shrubs high enough to conceal a man lying prone on the ground.

The river, which, from the mossy rocks where it rose, came following the windings of the rugged fief of the Moncayo to enter the glen by a cascade, thence went gliding on, bathing the roots of the willows that shaded its bank, or playing with a murmurous ripple among the stones rolled down from the mountain, until it fell into a pool very near the point which served the hunter for a hiding-place.

The poplars, whose silvered leaves the wind stirred with the sweetest rustle, the willows which, leaning over the limpid current, bedewed in it the tips of their pale branches, and the crowded groups of evergreen oaks about whose trunks honeysuckles and blue morning-glories clambered and twined, formed a thick wall of foliage around this quiet river-pool.

The wind, stirring the leafy curtains of living green which spread round about their floating shadow, let penetrate at intervals a stealthy ray of light that gleamed like a flash of silver over the surface of the motionless, deep waters.

Hidden among the bushes, his ear attent to the slightest sound, and his gaze fixed upon the spot where, according to his calculations, the deer should come, Garcés waited a long time in vain.

Everything about him remained buried in a deep calm.

Little by little, and it might well be that the lateness of the hour—for it was past midnight—began to weigh upon his lids—might well be that far-off murmurs of the water, the penetrating scent of the wild flowers and the caresses of the wind affected his senses with the soft drowsiness in which all nature seemed to be steeped—the enamoured boy, who until now had been occupied in revolving in his mind the most alluring fancies, began to find that his ideas took shape more slowly and his thoughts drifted into vague and indecisive forms.

After lingering a little in this dim border-land between waking and sleeping, at last he closed his eyes, let his crossbow slip from his hands, and sank into a profound slumber.

. . . . . . . . . .

It must have been for two or three hours now that the young hunter had been snoring at his ease, enjoying to the full one of the serenest dreams of his life, when suddenly he opened his eyes, with a stare, and half raised himself to a sitting posture, full yet of that stupor with which one wakes suddenly from profound sleep.

In the breathings of the wind and blended with the light noises of the night, he thought he detected a strange hum of delicate voices, sweet and mysterious, which were talking with one another, laughing or singing, each in its own individual strain, making a twitter as clamorous and confused as that of the birds awakening at the first ray of the sun amid the leaves of a poplar grove.

This extraordinary sound was heard for an instant only, and then all was still again.

“Without doubt, I was dreaming of the absurdities of which the shepherd told us,” exclaimed Garcés, rubbing his eyes in all tranquillity, and firmly persuaded that what he had thought he heard was no more than that vague impression of slumber which, on awaking, lingers in the imagination, as the closing cadence of a melody dwells in the ear after the last trembling note has ceased. And overcome by the unconquerable languor weighing down his limbs, he was about to lay his head again upon the turf, when he heard anew the distant echo of those mystic voices, which to the accompaniment of the soft stir of the air, the water and the leaves were singing thus:

CHORUS.