said lightly, as Mateo took the burden into his hands with ill concealed eagerness. "I will meet thee here in an hour," he said hurriedly; "and if I have not sold thy busca for a good price call me a vain boaster, a false friend if thou wilt. And thou, Catarina, go to thy home; even at the church of San Federico a maiden may not linger after her prayers are ended." Catarina responded with a shrug of the shoulders and an angry glint of her dark eyes; but Mateo saw neither, so anxious was he to be gone. The two donkeys had wandered off to the roadside, and stood with their heads down, vainly seeking a blade of grass in the dust and eyeing his retreat with an air of lazy indifference not more complete than that of Pancho, into whose mobile face crept however an expression of perfect satisfaction, strangely at variance with the words: "Que sin vergüenza! He would rob his own mother. Saw you not, Catarina, it was the stone my father gave me for luck, that caught his eye. All these months I have kept it, and my fortune has grown worse and worse, and when I saw the busca of this week was so poor, I thrust it in among the lot, and swore it should go to the first who offered. None threw a second look but Mateo; I kept my vow. Well, it has left me as poor in money as ever, but rich in that it has left thee with me. But that Mateo was eager to secure the prize, he would have hurried thee away, and I should never have had the chance to tell thee again that I love thee." "And for that thou wouldst barter all thou hadst ?" asked the girl brokenly. "O Panchito, thy sacrifice shall not be for nothing I swear to thee I love thee, as I hate and despise that false Mateo." Pancho sprang to his feet with a cry of delight, for never before had he heard such words from the lips of his wilful inamorata. For those and such as followed he felt well content to lose his only wealth, give his rival a fancied triumph, and even drive the donkeys to the city; though to work for the detested aguador was perhaps the most objectionable of all. she dared Catarina went her way first, not brave scandal by walking at his side; but he could see her tripping on before, and sometimes she would half turn and give him a little reassuring nod, which seemed to say, "I love thee, and I shall never marry the aguador." That was sufficient to fill him with ecstacy, for though he had not a tlaco he had hope, to which he had been so long a stranger that it lay in his bosom like a heavenly dove. It seemed to him something tangible, which could never again escape him. He went into the town. People stared at him to see him driving the donkeys of the aguador. Some jested him on his new calling; but at the great house when he spilt the water in carrying it in, they scolded him for a careless fellow, and he went out abashed; and seeing in the crowds in the streets no glimpse of Catarina, seemed to have lost his lode star, and to be plunged in darkest night. Dejectedly he passed through the streets and along the dusty highway. It was past noon when he reached the church, and two hours past that when he said for the thousandth time, "I am the fool of all fools. Though Catarina loves me, the aguador will marry her; he has sold my luck stone for a score of duros and even now the padrino, with the presents in his hand, is making terms with Señor Andres, her father." And he tore his hair in a frenzy of despair, until a sudden qualm caused him involuntarily to tighten his belt, and he remembered that he had not tasted food that day, and in spite of his love-lorn condition was very hungry. He glanced around him: not even a tuna on the clumps of cacti on every hand; not a human being in sight, and even had there been, Pancho would have remembered his Spanish blood and been ashamed to beg. There were the donkeys, but he could not eat donkeys. No, but they suggested a resource. He would drive them up to the spring, fill the cantarros with water, drive them down to the town, and earn a medio by selling it. It was much work for little gain, and he sighed, for though a man may be too proud to beg, he may not love labor. However, there was no help for it. One may better work than be hungry, especially when one imagines one's rival at ease and prosperous through one's own folly. "Vamos, ye others!" cried Pancho to the donkeys, and unwillingly enough all three began the ascent of the mountain. Meanwhile Mateo's delay was not unpremeditated, for he had gone his way with the luck stone jubilant, thinking how he would sell it, buy the corals, send them by the padrino to Señor Andres, and have the matter of the betrothal settled at once, while he drank a copa in the Tienda del Sol, laughing in his sleeve at his rival whom he had left in a fool's paradise, but in truth become but a poverty stricken keeper of burros. The first part of his programme was to to take his prize to a certain Señor Don Alfonso Carassa, who besides owning large reduction works, and buying freely any ores likely to yield a fair percentage of silver, had a fancy for collecting rare specimens, for which he would often pay sums far exceeding their actual value for the pleasure of seeing them in his cabinet. Now the aguador and Don Alfonso had more than once had differences of opinion as to the quantity and quality of the water Mateo served at his door, and the last time they had met Don Alfonso had called the carrier anything but the honest man he claimed to be. However, secure in the charm of the luck stone, Mateo chose a propitious moment, when the haciendero was just leaving the table where a feast day dinner had been served, and leaving the despised busca hidden under a nopal at the door of the hacienda, took the lump of native silver in his hand and humbly craved admission. "Picaro! sin vergüenza!" he cried. “Thou rascal without shame, wouldst thou first rob me and then cheat me? This is the very stone I dug with my own hands from the 'Tesoro Secreto' more than a year ago, -I would know it out of a thousand by this line of ruby that runs through it, and this streak of black quartz; who ever saw such a combination before? I but laid it down for a moment while I washed my hands,-why, ladron, thou wert the very rascal who poured the water for me, and it disappeared as by magic. And now thou hast the impudence to offer to sell it to me!" Don Alfonso was purple with rage. In vain the trembling aguador strove to speak; and while he was shaking beneath the storm of abuse poured on his devoted head, a company of soldiers, driving before them a score or more unwilling recruits, came up to the hacienda gates, and with delighted curiosity stopped to hear the dispute. The officer in charge leaned from his saddle to address Don Alfonso by name, and inquire the cause of his excitement. "Cause! cause enough por Dios!" cried Don Alfonso. "Here is a fellow who a year ago stole from me a specimen of native silver I would not have taken ten onzas of gold for, and who today offers it to me for sale, as who should say 'Thou art a fool, and blind'! Maldicion, he shall pass a month in the carcel for this, or I am not an alcalde ; and — " "Too fast, too fast!" cried the soldier laughing, as deaf as his friend however to the remonstrances of Mateo ; "I want a dozen men still to make up my number, — the fellows have been as shy as birds to-day. This is luck to catch a lepero in trouble. Fall in, my man, better a musket in the hand than a manacle on the ankle, and a place in the ranks than in the prison gang. Fall in then, him there. Adios, Don Alfonso, and thanks. Adelante!" - see to He had reckoned well. At the first sight of it, Don Anselmo's eyes glistened. He even lost his usual caution. "How much, hombre? How much?" he cried as he pounced upon And so by the most unexpected evil forit like an eagle on his prey. But no sooner tune Mateo the water-carrier had been seized had he turned it over, and in one searching, survey scrutinized its every angle, than his admiration, which never grew less, was supplemented by rage. upon as an idle vagabond, and forced into the ranks of the pronunciados, and doubtless that pauper Pancho would drive his donkeys and a thriving trade, and as an apparently indispensable adjunct to society escape conscription, wheedle the father, and marry Catarina ! Mateo groaned in spirit and in action as he was hurried along. They circled the Bufa on his way to quarters. His late fel low workers were leisurely driving their laden animals down to the city. Maria Sanctisima, there were his own ascending! Yes that palo del Diablo, Pancho, was driving them. It was a momentary consolation to have ocular proof that his rival was at least not with Catarina. Eh, what was that? the burro maldito had fallen again. He measured the distance with his eye yes, it was at the old spot. Caramba! with what force the animal had fallen forward upon its head and shoulders! Through the clear air he could see it perfectly as it went rolling down the hill. His unwelcome comrades saw it as plainly as he, and roared with laughter; but for that he fancied he could have heard the crashing of the cantar ros. Just then there was a turn in the road. The last glimpse that the unlucky Mateo had of the well known path, Pancho was standing gazing at the spot where the donkey had fallen, pressing his hands to his head like a man bereft of his senses, while the hapless animal, struggling and braying, was rolling helplessly down the hill amid the ruins of panniers and cantarros, a bewildering spectacle to his despairing master, who could only say again and again: "In the name of all the saints, what was that boboso Pancho standing in the middle of the road looking like a madman for, leaving my best donkey to be smashed to atoms with the cantarros?" A question which he had ample time to discuss in all its bearings. For it happened that upon that very night an unexpected advance of government troops drove the pronunciados to the fastnesses of the mountains; and in a succession of adventures which well nigh drove the memory of his old peaceful pursuits, petty trickeries, and sly peccadillos from his mind, two years passed by before he again saw the Bufa, and with a sigh crossed himself before the church Thither he went. Yes, the burros were safe, and living still: Don Pancho would see him. Maria Sanctisima! when he took off his old kepi and lifted his eyes to salute humbly the owner of that modest but flourishing hacienda, they fell upon a well known face. Yes, no clothes however much those of a gentleman could disguise him. — he recognized in an instant in Don Pancho the simple Pancho Gil he had so deftly tricked to his own undoing. Don Pancho had nothing to explain. As for Doña Catarina, when she came in with pearls on her neck, where his wildest dream had been to place a string of red corals, he would not have dared to ask her a single question to remind her that they had ever been aught than the lepero and Señora they were that day. Mateo pensively drove his donkeys away there was more money in his pouch, too, than would have replaced a thousand cantarros and began again his old career of aguador; but first in the twilight he sought the exact spot where his donkey had been wont to trip. It did not do so that day. That place was as even and level as a gaming table, no jagged stone, no straggling mesquite root there; yet Mateo knew it well, and though he loved work no better than another, he set himself to dig manfully. Within an hour he knew why Pancho had gazed upon that spot in delirium. A few half rotten beams and some spadefuls of earth had covered a small, deep hole, cut in a ledge of rock, and containing ten dingy jars, slender but high, and, mockery of mockeries, empty. To the distracted Mateo, frantic at the remembrance of his obtuseness in the past, yet an authority on the dates and speculations as to the strange hiding places that the Spaniards exiled years before at the Independencia had chosen, it required no second glance to give assurance that this had been a treasure vault. Pancho, instead of rushing with angry care to the fallen donkey, as he again and again had himself done, had looked for the cause of his stumbling, and thus, on the verge of starvation, having thrown away the so-called luck stone, which might have proved his bane, had chanced upon the means to gain both love and wealth. purse open to him. Though Mateo was an aguador still, and Pancho and Catarina were called Señor and Señora, all had reason to be content, Mateo perhaps the most of all, for what can be merrier than to have one's needs and little luxuries supplied without a throe of responsibility or care? "Dios mio!" he says now, he is growing an old man, and will perhaps yield his place to a younger soon, -"Why should I break my head thinking about anything? The maize is growing for me, and my pulque is brewing "; so he allows his donkeys to browse on the hillside, and he lies in the sun and sleeps; and sometimes Doña Catarina passing by averts her gaze from Don Pancho, and curls her lip. It must be a thorn on her pleasant path to think that but for the chances she might have been crouching at the side of the aguador, and that Don Pancho knows it! Louise Palmer Heaven. So rich with life. Then comes the thief in the night, Death, and alas for the poor robbed soul on the morrow! With senses stolen, all life's treasures gone, Now is she as a lamp blown out and broken; A yesterday, whereof the past is made; A precious gem dissolved and dissipated. Hunter MacCulloch. On the 9th of May, 1885, the British ship "Earl of Dalhousie," a four-masted, fullrigged steel vessel of seventeen hundred tons register, while being towed down the bay without any ballast, in charge of the tug "Relief," in a very strong northwest breeze, was struck by a heavy squall as the tug was off on one bow. She turned and sunk in fiftyfour feet of water. As she went over, her top masts were broken into short pieces, down to the lower masts. The broken ends of these bedded themselves in the mud about fourteen feet, and the ship lay on the bottom with her starboard rail buried in the mud about six feet and the upper side of the foretop just level with the mud. As she sunk bow first, the fore end bedded deep in the mud so that the bowsprit at the knightheads was only three feet above the mud. The forecastle door on the lower side was level with the mud, and it rushed in and filled the forecastle level with the door. The Union Iron Works took the contract for raising the vessel on the 16th of May. Placing on record the results and value of devices used to accomplish the raising of the sunken ship is the only part taken by the writer in that event. The pluck and energy of the contractors, the skill, patience, and ingenuity of James Dickie, the surprising accuracy and efficiency of the work performed by the divers, contending against a strong tide in fifty-four feet of muddy water, resulted in rescuing the "Earl of Dalhousie " from an unpleasant predicament. The first operation was to survey the vessel. She was found about one third of a mile from the nearest wharf, and lying in a very strong tideway, at an angle of about fortyfive degrees to the tide. The intention was to float the vessel by closing all the openings on the port side down to the level of the hatches, and forcing the water out down to the level of the upper side of the hatches, by pumping compressed air into the hold, and to keep her on her side by having tackles on the masts sufficient to keep them up and braces to prevent their coming up too far, which would allow the air to escape at the open hatches. To do this it was necessary to get a barge large enough to hold all the necessary machinery and stable enough to stand the strain of the tackles on the ship's masts. A barge was obtained, built of iron, two hun |