asked me questions about my country, being, apparently greatly interested in my replies. He is a tall, military-looking man, about sixty years of age, a native of the country, like Barrios, but a man of higher stamp. He was surrounded by officers in full uniform, who were, as a whole, an intelligent and finelooking body of men. The city was full of troops, and new detachments were coming in from different directions every day, and there was constant drilling in the plaza in preparation for the war, which now seemed to be inevitable. Business was almost entirely suspended, and the commercial and agricultural interests of the country were suffering greatly from the state of doubt and anxiety which existed, as well as from the scarcity of labor arising from the fact that many of the "mozos " had run away and hidden in the mountains to avoid being drafted. Meanwhile the two presidents were changing complimentary dispatches, continuing their preparations for war, and levying contributions or making forced loans to meet the heavy expenses for the equipment and maintenance of the two armies.

ex

It was believed by some that Barrios had simply made an excuse of the Honduras affair to send his troops to the frontier, and that he was ambitious to get control of Honduras and San Salvador, with a view

ultimately to re-uniting the five states under one government, with himself as president. If that was the case, it seems that he either found Gonzalez better prepared than he had anticipated, or, for some other reason, concluded that the time had not yet come for so bold a stroke; for, from his dispatches, he appeared to be anxious to do everything in his power to prevent the impending war, and offered to disband his troops if Gonzalez would do the same or come to the frontier to have a personal conference with him. But the two governments were so suspicious of each other that it seemed very doubtful whether they would be able to come to any amicable agreement, although the trouble had really grown out of nothing and there was not even a plausible excuse for war.

The capital of San Salvador was formerly a rich and beautiful city, but it has suffered many times from severe earthquakes, and in April, 1854, was entirely destroyed. The present city has been built since then, and was fast growing to rival in beauty and prosperity the former capital, when, in 1873. another terrible earthquake occurred, which left more than half the city in ruins.

San Salvador is a rich and fertile state, although, owing to an imperfect tariff, together with losses from earthquakes and a serious decline in the price of indigo during

the past few years, the government is to-day suffering from financial embarrassment. Indigo is the great staple of the country, and the crop at one time amounted to between two and three millions of dollars. Besides indigo, coffee and sugar are now produced in considerable quantities, especially in the vicinity of Santa Ana, and coal and iron have been discovered in different parts of the state. Sufficient tobacco also is raised for home consumption, though of rather an inferior quality. The gold and silver mines in the neighborhood of San Miguel have been worked, with more or less satisfactory results, for many years, and are no doubt still capable of much development.

Besides the capital and Sonsonate, Santa Ana and San Miguel are large and important towns; the great indigo fair is held in the latter place every year in the month of NoBesides Acajutla, San Salvador has two other ports, viz., La Libertad and La Union; the latter has one of the finest harbors on the coast, while the former is merely an open roadstead.

vember.

While I was still in doubt about making the trip to San Miguel, I received letters which decided me to give up all idea of further expeditions into the interior and return at once to Guatemala. So I determined to take the next steamer up the coast from La Libertad to San José. The port is twelve leagues from the capital and a diligence runs down to meet every steamer. My business obliged me, however, to remain in the city the next morning for several hours after the diligence had started. When at last I was free I succeeded in getting mules and an arriero to take me to the port.

We reached La Libertad before eight o'clock and found the "Honduras" already there. After a pleasant voyage of two days we anchored off San José at six o'clock in the evening, and, going ashore very early the next morning, I found that we had arrived a day earlier than was expected, and that there would be no diligence for the capital until the following day. I could not bear the idea of remaining in the port for twentyfour hours, so I commenced to look about for mules to take me up to the city. The only saddle-mule I could find had been already secured by a jeweler just arrived from Bolivia, who was bustling about with a well-satisfied air, preparing to depart immediately for Guatemala, ninety miles distant, while his less fortunate fellow-passengers (some twenty in number) stood about

watching him in a most disconsolate manner I succeeded after a while in finding a very dilapidated-looking mustang and a hard, narrow Mexican saddle. We set out at eleven o'clock under a scorching sun, and Our cavalcade doubtless made a most absurd appearance, our uncouth beasts raising clouds of dust as we trotted away toward the interior. We reached Escuintla at seven o'clock utterly exhausted, and, after partaking of some slight refreshment, went immediately to bed. We were in the saddle again at five the next morning, however, and reached the capital before two in the afternoon, arriving twenty-eight hours in advance of our fellow passengers. I found Guatemala full of troops in active preparation for war, just as they had been in San Salvador. A few days before I left the city the negotiations between the two governments resulted in an agreement to disband the troops on both sides, and thus a temporary peace was patched up. Within two months another revolution broke out which resulted in a decided victory for the Guatemaltecos.

Just before I left Guatemala, I received an invitation to a wedding in which the chief actors were both members of families of some prominence and distinction in that country. The bride's mother, now a widow, is an American, from Philadelphia, who married a Spanish gentleman and went with him to Guatemala about forty years ago. According to the custom of the country of solemnizing marriages early in the morning, the guests assembled at this lady's house soon after seven o'clock. After the usual delay of half an hour or so, the bride appeared and the whole party proceeded in carriages to the cathedral. Here the ceremony was very imposing and lasted fully an hour. We returned to the house to the wedding breakfast and then came dancing, an inspection of the bridal presents, and a tour of the bride's house, which adjoined her mother's. I enjoyed the day exceedingly, and shall not soon forget my kind hostess's last words to me as I was leaving the house. She had said good-bye and wished me a safe return home, etc., and, as I was descending the stairs, she called out to me in a slightly tremulous voice, with her pretty Spanish accent, "Remember me to my country!"

I cannot close without acknowledging my indebtedness to Mr. Muybridge, of San Francisco, for offering me the use of his justly celebrated photographs to assist in illustrating this article.

ORDERED AWAY.

BUT Mrs. Stubbs had no thought of sleeping. There was a weight upon her brain and a fire in her veins which made quiet, restful sleep impossible; and yet there was a strange numbness stealing over her when she lay still. It dimmed her sight; the picture, like Blossom's face, waved and danced and blurred to indistinctness upon the wall before her. Was her hearing becoming dulled? She dared not lie there, lest she should float away into an unconsciousness from which there was no return.

She listened for some passing sound, and a burst of merry voices came from the parlor. with a happy vibration, as they died away, jarring upon her spirit. She rose heavily and left the bed. But she would not go in to them. She could not so soon meet the man who had deceived the child and her. They would not mark her absence. They did not need her to make their happiness complete. No one in all the world needed her now. No one wanted her, if the truth were told. Only a little while ago and her energies were strained to meet the demands upon them, and now the world seemed to move on and

she to be dropped by the way. Even her schemes, when nothing but schemes was left to her, had come to naught. All around her were signs of a life in which she had now no part-voices and laughter coming in at the open window, music sounding in the distance, people hurrying by. Some one passed in the twilight, gay in a sweeping gown with ribbons dangling and a shrill laugh cutting the air. It was Claudia Bryce with her new lover by her side. Ah! the young were easily consoled. Age and wrinkles and gray hairs only brought constancy-even in despair. She groped her way to the door and stole into the open air again, fearful lest Blossom should hear her. She longed for a breath of the wind that came tearing over the prairies at times like a troop of wild horses. But the air was still and sultry to-night. Doors and windows were thrown wide open to catch the occasional breeze cooled by its passage across the broad river. The notes of a bugle, faint and sweet, sounded from behind the barracks. There was running to and fro, cheery greetings and gossip at every corWas it her morbid fancy, or these voices stilled at her approach? The door at her old home was ajar, the window of the little parlor was open and a trolling, rollicking song came out as if to mock her as she went by. She had been the mistress here once. She had reigned like a queen. A poor kingdom it might seem to the fine ladies about her, but all her own, and she had gloried in it. Now she was crownless, deposed. She had grasped at something beyond this and lost all.

ner.

were

She wandered on. The cheerful, familiar sights and sounds which had rasped her irritated spirit were left behind. The fields of grain waved green about her, the river rolled by just beyond. There was something soothing in the murmur of its sweeping current. For how many years had it been the undertone to her busy life! Away in the distance -brought near by the haze of twilightplain and sky met in a debatable land of shadow. She wondered, with a dull curiosity, about the world off there, of which she knew so little. With the great, calm sky above her and the quiet river flowing near, a measure of peace and hope returned. There might be something yet, in that unknown region from which the darkness was advancing in great strides, for the child and her if they could but push out boldly to seek it.

And then she remembered, with a pang VOL. XV.-43.

sharp as a pain, that the child was no longer her own to control. She had resigned her right to the girl. She had indeed lost her scepter and given away her crown! She was glad when she turned back and gained the inclosure of the fort to find the way she had come over nearly deserted and the night fast closing in. No one in the still darkness heeded the black figure which seemed a part of itself as it hurried on. There was a light in the sutler's parlor, toward which her feet turned of themselves. For one brief moment she could fancy that the old days had come again. Once more she saw the room half full of smoke, the round table drawn up close to the fire where waited an impatient, familiar group. What kept the mistress so long away? Some one sang a noisy song to beguile the time. The refrain came to her ears with the tap of heels upon the floor. Her hand was thrust out for the latch. Then she came to herself and shrank back from the door. Dead and gone! The forms she had called up in her vision had turned to dust and ashes years before. What was she but a ghost of the former mistress of the place?

She hurried on home. Home! It was no home to her. But she crept into the house unobserved and to bed. There was silence in the parlor out from which the merry voices had come only an hour before. The visitors had departed and Blossom would come presently to see if she still slept. She composed her limbs and even controlled her quick, panting breath as the girl's step sounded outside the door; and Blossom, having peeped in, stole away again.

Then alone in the darkness she tried to think it out-to plan her future and the child's. She had never been one to grasp at another hand for strength. She had stood alone fearless, self-helped, but now in the darkness and in the feebleness of her spirit she would have sought a friend. But there was none-no one who could enter in any degree into her hopes or be made to feel her despair. Cogger's plain face, with its shrewd blinking eyes, rose before her unbidden. But she put it aside. What could he know of her ambition for the child? He would only range himself with Captain Elyot and "the rest of 'em," she thought bitterly. No, she must fight alone; for fight she would. The life she had been leading the past few months was galling enough, even with hope to lend her patience. It would be beyond endurance now.

Oh, if she had only held out against the young man! If she had but barred the door in his face instead of urging on the intimacy which had ended in Blossom's marriage! If she had only been firm at the last! She herself had made the net in which Blossom's feet were snared. But for this they might have gone away, they two, and somewhere-even though at the ends of the earth-in some distant city where they were unknown, the money which went for nothing here would have bought position, favor-everything for the child.

The moon, straggling up the sky, sent a long, slanting ray like a ghostly finger into the room where the woman lay tossing upon her uneasy bed. It touched the face upon the wall so like Blossom's. Oh, how could any one turn against the child? Perhaps it was not true after all. It might be that this stranger was mistaken. The gossip of a garrison had taught her that rumor was two-faced. No disturbing news had reached Blossom or she would have shared it with her mother before now, and Captain Elyot seemed happy and at ease. How could he be if this were true? Still if this old man so far away had looked with favor upon the marriage there should have come a letter from him before now. And Blossom had assured her that there was none. What if one had come and the young man, unwilling to let the truth be known, had concealed it from the child? She rose from the bed again and by the light of the moon made her way across the narrow passage to the parlor door, which opened noiselessly at her touch. It was but a step in the dim light to the corner where Captain Elyot's writing-case lay closed and locked upon a table. She held her breath as she took it in her arms lest she should awaken the sleepers in the next room, but no alarm disturbed her as she retreated swiftly. She shut the door and fastened it carefully after her. Then lighting a candle and drawing the curtain of her narrow window she prepared to search the contents of the desk. A bunch of keys that had tried every unyielding lock at the post was among the odds and ends reserved from the final disposal of the stock at the store. These she brought out, testing each one patiently, until at last the lock sprang back and the lid opened. She turned the papers over cautiously, careful not to disturb their order, seeking, she hardly knew by what token, this letter which Blossom, in reply to her inquiries, assured her had

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never arrived. But Blossom might easily be deceived. She would know for herself. It was no easy task with nothing to guide her. to guide her. She might have spent hours in the search but that a crumpled letter, evidently tossed in carelessly and buried under a weight of more neatly arranged papers, caught her eye. Expecting nothing, for it was old and worn in appearance, yet moved to open it, she took it from its envelope and was struck at once by the first words, Nephew Robert." This must be what she sought! She turned hastily to the conclusion, but the signature was illegible, and then she remembered that she had never asked the name of this old man in whom she felt so keen an interest. She deciphered the date at the beginning of the sheet and found to her disappointment that it was written months before Blossom's marriage. Still some fascination held her eyes to the crooked, blurred lines and she began to read. It was the letter received months before his marriage, urging Captain Elyot to write to the cousin down on the Jersey shore. The tone was one of reproach as well as menace, and the inference gathered by the woman who spelled the words out slowly one by one was that the young man owed allegiance to this cousin. She held the letter long in her hands gazing at the words which seemed to conceal so much. So he was false, as well as fickle! How long would it be before he wearied of the child? She had nearly replaced the contents of the desk when she remembered that she had not yet found the letter for which she had been searching. But she looked in vain and with less interest now. Blossom was right, no doubt. Captain Elyot's uncle had never written. It was as the stranger at the store had said, the old man was angry. Captain Elyot's grand friends had turned against him! Oh, what a fool she had been! She said it to herself, crumpling the letter in her hand as the young man had done, and feeling her heart grow like a stone toward him. East and west, wherever he went, he had gained the love of some woman only to cast it aside, she said to herself. It was no triumph that Blossom had won him at last. Her day, too, would be brief. He had given up this cousin for the child,this cousin to whom he was promised, without doubt, but he had known all the time that Blossom's inheritance would be his, and it was for this he had pursued her. And she had helped it on! Her very