When, going very quickly, they passed to the end of the causeway, and so down the bank of the _arroyo_ to where he lay, he clasped feebly their hands as they knelt beside him: the lantern throwing a weird, uncertain light upon the three, upon the dark stone wall, upon the dark water of the pool. "It was a trap, my father; we were betrayed," he said brokenly. "But we made a brave fight, and I can die without shame." He felt the quiver that passed through Pancha's body as he spoke. "Yes, I must die, my Pancha. It is very near. All is ended that we planned--that we planned on this very spot, not yet a little week ago. It is hard, my little one--but--it--must--be." Then he was silent, and clenched his teeth--this brave Pepe--that his face might not show to Pancha his mortal agony. Manuel held Pepe's hand and wept: the silent, forlorn weeping of an utterly desolate old man. Pancha could not weep. She clutched Pepe's hand in both of hers, as though forcibly she would hold him back to life. Pepe understood her thought. "It may not be, my Pancha, my Panchita. It is very, very near now. Give me one little kiss, my heart,"--it was almost in a whisper that Pepe spoke,--"one little kiss to tell me of your love before I go." And so, for the first and the last time in her life, Pancha kissed Pepe upon the lips: a kiss in which was all the passionate love that would have been his in the long years to come; a kiss that was worth dying for, if only by dying it could be gained; a kiss that for a moment thrilled Pepe with the fullest, gladdest life that he had ever known--and that, being ended, left him dead. Then Pancha, kneeling where the holy fathers, far back in the centuries, had sung their _Te Deum laudamus_, kneeling where but five little days before her life had been filled with a love so perfect as to be beyond all power of thankfulness in words of praise, looked down upon her dead lover and felt her heart break within her in the utterness of her despair. * * * * * Standing amidst the dead upon the causeway above, a dim shadow against the star-lit sky, was another figure--unperceived by, yet completing, the group below. The arms were raised, half threateningly, half imploringly, and the lithe, vigorous form swayed in unison with the wild throbbings of a heart in which sated hate did mortal battle with outraged love. Chona had conquered; but even in the first flush of her triumph she knew that love and hope and happiness, that everything which makes life worth holding to, had been lost. THE ABLEST MAN IN THE WORLD. BY E. P. MITCHELL. _The Sun, New York, May, 1879._