These are dangerous thoughts to enter any man’s mind who has a troublesome wife, especially when that man has no other consideration than for himself alone. He wandered out of the Alhambra grounds and strolled along the road, over the hill, past the massive old red towers which had seen so many tragedies and had heard so often the din of battle for their mastery. He was not romantic, but had read deeply in Spanish history, and knew something of the world which had once been enclosed by those mouldering walls and fortresses. The soothing melody of falling waters and the whispering of the many streams which descend through the richly-wooded slopes to fall into the Genil, down to Granada, make a night under the shadow of the Alhambra a never-to-be-forgotten pleasure, like no other for kindling poetical thoughts and romantic ideas. But not poetry nor romance stirred, this autumn night, the breast of Mr. Crowe. The greed of gold, the thought of all he could achieve if he had the tenth of this woman’s wealth, was moving within him, and he went out to meditate on the matter. Past the gardens of the Generalife, up the hill, through vineyards and fields of prickly pear, by the cactus hedges and the clumps of aloes, under the soft shade of olive groves, on towards the Sierra Nevada, which lifts its sunny peaks to heaven like thrones of pearl above the Alhambra hill, till he found the road stopped by the cemetery wall. Seeking the entrance, he found himself for the first time within a Spanish place of burial. How unlike the quiet solemnity of an English churchyard! The ground was rough and untended; a few aloes were scattered here and there, but with no attempt at orderly arrangement. And where were the graves? In place of the sacred six feet of earth, planted with flowers and marked by beautiful sculpture, inscribed with the touching memorials of the dead, he saw innumerable cells, built in the thickness of the massive walls which surrounded the place, each cell hermetically sealed with a marble tablet, on which were recorded the name and titles of the departed whose remains it inclosed, together with some verses, or quotations from the Missal, in memory of the lost ones. An unpleasant, business-like way of economising space, far too suggestive of lockers in a store, and giving one a sense of insecurity against violation when the space occupied by the corpse should be required for a fresh tenant. As Mr. Crowe was an advocate of cremation, and considered land which would grow potatoes far too valuable to waste on dead people, his susceptibilities were exercised merely by the novelty of the arrangements, and not in any way by a sense of their impropriety. Any way, he considered them good enough for Spaniards, who were far too conservative to have any claim on an advanced thinker like himself.