As in most of the Spanish American countries, so in Porto Rico, ghosts are common,--so common that in some towns the people hardly turn to look at them; and if on a wild night in the hurricane season they hear them gibbering at their doors, they patter an _ave_ or throw a piece of harness at the disturbance, and sleep again. Ponce, for instance, has a number of these spooks, such as the man who searches for his hidden money, and the child with a snowy face that knocks on the panes, then stares fixedly in, with corpse eyes, at the windows. Best known among these supernatural citizens are two lovers who "spoon" on dark nights, and are faintly outlined on the landscape as figures of quivering, smoky blue. Their favorite haunt is their death-place, eight miles from Ponce, in a hollow among limestone hills, now environed by a coffee plantation. Here are found three basins--results of erosion, most likely--that are described as natural bath-tubs. The middle and largest of these pools is partly filled with silt, probably occluding the entrance to a cavern which formerly opened into it, a fathom or so below the water-surface. This cave was the hiding-place of a native woman whose father had discovered her love for one of Ponce de Leon's soldiers. He forbade her to have anything to do with the enemies of his country, enlarged on their rapacity, cruelty, and treachery, and tried to create in her a sense of shame that she should have chosen a Spaniard, instead of a Boriqueno chief, for a lover. There were no locksmiths in the Antilles for love to laugh at, but there were spears and knives to fear, and the young couple, who seemed to be inspired by genuine affection, met at this lonely spot to do their courting. On the least suspicion of a hostile approach, the maid could slip into the water, enter the cave, and wait for an hour or a day, until the intruder had retired. However it happened nobody could tell,--or would,--but the Spaniard was found drowned one morning in that pool. He may have been found waiting there, by the angry parent, thrown in, on general principles, and held to the bottom by his steel arms and armor; or he may have been trying to find the cave in which his charmer had secreted herself, and while so engaged may have bumped his head against the rocky wall and stunned himself, or he may have been a poor swimmer and lost his wits and his wind. At all events, drowned he was, and the dusky virgin who loved him, seeing his form at the bottom of the water, sang her sorrow chant, dived in, and, holding to his body, perished wilfully at his side. Their love endures, and that is why their luminous shadows sit at the brink of the pool, with locked arms and meeting lips, to the disgust of voting women and confirmed bachelors.