Estrella evaded his offered embrace and hastened into her own little room after bidding him a short goodnight; she wondered, vaguely, what it was that had startled her in the path, but, in spite of everything, her healthy youth soon asserted itself and she was lost to her little world upon the earth with all its many disappointments and unknown turnings. The day upon which Estrella made her visit to the mansion on the hill, as the residence of Ruth Wakefield was popularly known in the village of San Domingo, was a memorable one in the history of the Spanish-American war for it happened to be the fifteenth day of February in the year of our Lord and Master 1898. Upon that fateful day secret preparations had been made by the agents of some of those who were then in power over the people of Cuba ... secret mines had been laid and large quantities of explosives had been placed in Havana Harbor with a set purpose in view; many of those who had been incarcerated in political prisons had been kept in total ignorance of the movements of Spanish troops in Cuba but most of the inhabitants of the Island had known that, for some time, some definite object with reference to our own United States was being considered by those who directed the Spanish soldiery. Among those who had been apprised of what had been going on during the confinement of those who had been liberated the night before in San Domingo was Manuello; during the absence of Estrella from their home, that evening, this redoubtable warrior had been hobnobbing with the Spanish soldiers in the block-house nearest to the village and had discovered something of the plot to blow up a United States battleship in Havana Harbor; as it was known that the _Maine_, an armored cruiser of the second-class, had been lying in the harbor for some weeks, the young fellow was especially nervous, and, hearing Estrella's flying feet approaching their dwelling, he dreaded some new horror. The little village of San Domingo was wrapped in the first sound slumber of the night. Good Father Felix had been dreaming, for some hours, of the heavenly home he hoped, sometime, to reach; old Mage had long ago forgotten all about her defense of her dear young lady, that day, and Estrella was far away from every human care. But Ruth Wakefield was one of those who never sleep right through the dark hours of any night; from her earliest recollection, she had been wide awake, with a clarified vision of the affairs of daily life as well as of those that were quite beyond the world of men and women who were yet embodied, about the hour of two A.M., and, when she had some especially knotty problem to solve, she seldom slept for more than an hour or so at a time, but would waken to a consciousness of the facts of her human existence with a shock that would almost always cause her to jump as if struck a blow, which, indeed, was the exact state of affairs, only the blow was a mental one.