pure whiteness of the skin. There are many like that. As they lean over the balconies, at a distance they look so very fetching even though they may not be at all pretty. Shall we wear mantillas? I haven't seen a hat since I came into this town. I'd love to wear a mantilla."

She went out on the corredor and leaned on the ledge, looking off toward the mountains towering up so near. There was a sound of water trickling from the fountain to which all day long women and children went with brass-bound buckets poised upon their heads. There was the tinkle of a mandolin, and a man's voice trolling out a long-sustained note at the close of a mountaineer's song. Then came the jangling of bells as a muleteer drew up his gaily caparisoned team before the door, and left it there to go into the cantina below from which issued the sound of clinking glasses and laughter. Above all the silent stars gleamed peacefully or dropped suddenly behind the sombre green of the mountains.

Anita turned. "Come out, mother. Ven aqui," she repeated. "It is so lovely and restful. Listen to that song. Isn't it truly Spanish? There, he is singing another, oh, so pathetically."

the clear, high tenor voice reached them.

"It almost makes me weep," said Anita, "and yet all he is saying is that he is of Pravia and his mother is of Pravia, but it is such a haunting air, so different from anything we might hear at home. Don't you like it all, and aren't you content to stay a long, long while? It is so quiet and pleasant and so delightfully cheap."

They stood together till the singer had ceased, the brightest star which they had been watching, was lost behind the mountain, and only the song of the fountain, and the queer little tink-tank, tink-a-tank of the night insects broke the silence. Then they went in.

CHAPTER VI

 O las Piedras!

O las Piedras!

The travellers were awakened in the early morning by the drone of cow-carts, by the singing of a thrush in a cage hung at the doorway of their inn, and by the chatter of girls flocking to the fountain. As soon as she was dressed Anita went out upon the balcony to look down on the little plaza which was lively enough now that the village was awake. Groups of women and girls gossiped at the fountain; the shoemaker across the way kept time to his singing with the tap-tap upon his last; the little moza of the inn skurried 

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