She clung to his neck, to his hands, to his feet; she made his farewell an unspeakable agony. At last he laid her upon her couch, sobbing and shrieking like a child in an extremity of physical anguish. But he did not blame her. Her impetuosities, her unreasonable extravagances, were a part of her nature, her race, and her character. He did not expect a weak, excitable woman to become suddenly a creature of flame and steel. But it was a wonderful rest to his exhausted body and soul to turn from her to Antonia. She led him quietly to his chair by the parlor fire. She gave him food and wine. She listened patiently, but with a living sympathy, to his wrong. She endorsed, with a clasp of his hand and a smile, his purpose. And she said, almost cheerfully: “You have not given up all your arms, father. When I first heard of the edict, I hid in my own room the rifle, the powder and the shot, which were in your study. Paola has knives in the stable; plenty of them. Get one from him.” Good news is a very relative thing. This information made the doctor feel as if all were now easy and possible. The words he said to her, Antonia never forgot. They sang in her heart like music, and led her on through many a difficult path. The conversation then turned upon money matters, and Antonia received the key of his study, and full directions as to the gold and papers secreted there. Then Isabel was awakened, and the rifle brought down; and Paola saddled the fleetest horse in the stable, and after one solemn five minutes with his daughter, Robert Worth rode away into the midnight darkness, and into a chaos of public events of which no man living could forecast the outcome. Rode away from wife and children and home; leaving behind him the love and labor of his lifetime-- “The thousand sweet, still joys of such As hand in hand face earthly life.” For what? For justice, for freedom of thought and action, for the rights of his manhood, for the brotherhood of race and religion and country. Antonia and Isabel stood hand in hand at the same lattice from which the Senora had watched her son away, and in a dim, uncertain manner these thoughts connected themselves in each mind with the same mournful inquiry--Is it worth while? As the beat of the horse’s hoofs died away, they turned. The night was cold but clear, and the sky appeared so high that their eyes throbbed as they gazed upward at the grand arch, sprinkled with suns and worlds. Suddenly into the tranquil spaces there was flung a sound of joy and revelry; and the girls stepped to a lattice at the end of the corridor and looked out.