An Eagle Flight

n the Da

Philippines. A semicircle of courtiers was round her. Spaniards, Chinese, natives, soldiers, curates, old and young, intoxicated with the light and music, were talking, gesturing, disputing with animation. Even Brother Sibyla deigned to address this queen, in whose splendid hair Do?a Victorina was wreathing a diadem of pearls and brilliants. She was white, too white perhaps, and her d

; on the mat an old man dying. Beaten down by fever, he lies and looks about him, calling a name, in strangling voice, with tears. No one-a clanking chain, an echoed groan somewhere; that was all. And away off in

sleep. Even Ibarra, wearied more perhaps with his sad thoughts than his long voyage, sleeps too. Only the young Franciscan, silent and motionless just now at the feast, awake still. His elbow on the window-place of his little cell, his chin sunk in his