Pilarica was glad to come out from the hubbub of the streets into the comparative quiet of the great square from whose midst arises, a dark mass of fretted granite, the cathedral of St. James. About one of its fountains, carved in the shape of the pilgrim shell, were grouped a number of girls, Dolores among them, filling the slender water-buckets of Galicia and lifting them to their heads. They were singing _coplas_, as in autumns past, but now their songs were sorrowful instead of merry, for the brothers and lovers who had been drafted for the war did not return and slowly there had filtered through, even to Santiago, news of disaster and defeat. One sad young voice after another made its moan, and Pilarica stood listening with her innocent smile undimmed. She knew these girls, Dolores’ friends, and to her childishness the pathos of their new songs was sweeter than their former _coplas_ of mirth. It was Milagros who was singing when Pilarica came: “Wherever the lads are thronging, I see him, still their chief. Oh, shadow of my longing! Vain shadow of my grief!” Then rose the shrill note of little Peligros: “Oh, for a horse of air To gallop down the skies, And carry me swiftly where My wounded lover lies!” The bowed figure of a woman in middle life, moving toward the cathedral, had paused to hear the strains, and suddenly from her there broke a passionate contralto: “My cabin has a window That looks on sea and sky, And all the day I sit and watch Ships and clouds go by. Sailor, sailor, climb the mast, Ask wind and spray and sea What they have done with a widow’s son That the King’s fleet took from me.” The widow passed slowly on into the church, and Pilarica heard a muffled tone, sounding like a sob, that she hardly recognized, at first, as coming from Dolores: “Three names shall tell his story: ’Twas Vigo gave him breath, Santiago gave him love, And Cuba gave him death.” Then soared the pure, clear voice of Consuelo: “God has lifted my belovèd To His fair blue world above; I shall not see my belovèd, Not again, till I see Love.” Pilarica skipped over to Dolores and pulled at her skirt. “Will you go for walnuts with dolly and me?” she entreated. “The mistress will not have me in the school again to-day, because I want to learn. We can stop at the cottage for luncheon.” Dolores looked down at her eager little cousin with kind, listless eyes. “I must take home my bucket,” she said, “but I will come back.” When she came back, Rafael was with her. Pilarica had disappeared from the square, but they knew that they would find her in the cathedral, for the cathedral was everybody’s meeting-place, everybody’s resting-place and the playground of all the children of Santiago.