"Time passed over Zaragossa, and even the infidel Moors respected the holy pillar, for it was found uninjured when the city was re-captured from them by Don Alphonso of Arragon. "And so last year, when the French had pushed their batteries along the right bank of the Guerva, and had beaten down the rampart; and when, at their head, General Ribeaupierre had cut a passage through the ranks of Palafox into the wide and stately Coso: when Lefebre assailed the Portillo, and was repulsed with the loss of two thousand men, but returned with renewed fury, when a carnage ensued that must have ended in the fall of Zaragossa and the capture of Don José, _then_ it was, senor, that the young girl Augustina, inspired by vengeance for her lover's fall, appeared among the soldiers, calling on Our Lady del Pilar to aid her chosen city. "Then springing over dead and dying, she snatched a lighted match from her dead lover's hand and discharged a twenty-six pounder loaded with grapeshot full at the advancing foe, and animated the citizens to continue that awful struggle by which Zaragossa was saved, though the flower of Arragon perished. Foot to foot and breast to breast they fought, contesting every street and house, from floor to floor, till the French retired. Augustina received a noble pension, and now wears on her sleeve a shield of honour with the city's name." By the time this story was ended, darkness had almost set in; the rain was still rushing down in a ceaseless flood, and the vivid lightning, with its green and ghastly glare, lit up from time to time the gloomy chambers of the silent villa. Remembering that he had seen a lamp in one of the rooms, Quentin was about to go in search of it, when the sound of a heavy door closing with a bang that echoed through all the mansion, made him pause, and as he was Scotsman enough to have certain undefined but superstitious notions, he turned to his companion, who on hearing this unexpected noise, had started from her seat with her eyes dilated and her lips parted. "You heard that, senora?" said he. "It is the private door of the chapel--the door through which we passed," she replied. "What has caused it to open and shut?" "The wind, probably." "It can be nothing else, senora, though in truth I was thinking of those two effigies that for seven hundred years have stood, with their stony eyes uplifted and their mailed hands clasped in prayer." "What of them?" she asked, with surprise. "What if they got off their pedestals and took a promenade through the villa on this stormy night?" "Ah, senor, don't talk of such things!" said Donna Isidora, as she shrunk close to him and laid her hand on his arm. END OF VOL. II.