Independencia had superior speed to the Covadonga, a continuation of the fight in open sea must finally result in his boat being overtaken and run down. His great knowledge of the coast gave him his only chance to get into shoal waters, where the large frigate would not be able to follow him. If no es cape seemed possible he meant to run the Covadonga on shore, save her crew, and then blow her up.

He had observed that the Commander of the hostile frigate, in his great zeal and excitement in pursuing, appeared to overlook or to be ignorant of the fact that his ship oftentimes entered waters too shallow for a vessel of the draught of the Independencia.

On this circumstance, Condell begun to build a hope of greatly perplexing the enemy.

They were then approaching a submarine reef. Condell calculated that his vessel would be just able to cross the reef in safety, but the Independencia would most assuredly founder on the rocks. Drawing as much as it was here possible the attention of his enemy on the pursuit, Condell headed straight for the reef, keeping himself between the frigate and the dangerous place, thus obstructing to the pursuer the view of the breakers. At the same time the smoke from the Covadonga was so great as to obscure the southern horizon from the Independencia, while she herself had everything free and clear in front. While the Covadonga approached this point, which was to decide the issue of battle, Condell slackened the speed of his vessel.

Commander Moore, whose attention was riveted on the prey that seemed just within his grasp, believed that the machinery of the enemy was out of order, and waited with great glee the moment when this somewhat lengthy combat with so small a vessel would end in its surrender or destruction.

of the frigate should be directed against the gunboat.

In this situation the Covadonga quickened her speed. Close behind her followed the Independencia roaring and foaming.

Moore watched with nervous tension the movements of the enemy and the Peruvians, sure of victory, shouted "Viva Perú!” In this critical moment the Covadonga glided over the reef, and her crew rang back, "Viva Chile!"

While this shout still echoed in the ears of the Peruvians, they felt at once a mighty shock, which with a crash upset everything on board.

With a power of five hundred and fifty horses the iron frigate alighted on the submarine rock.

rew now

The shouts of victory of her crew changed to lamentations and maledictions.

Although the little gunboat had sprung a leak, nevertheless she had crossed the reef with slight damage and had stopped her engines, whilst she summoned the hostile commander to surrender, sending shot by shot into the tilting vessel thumping and grinding on the rocks.

She did not leave the place of combat until she had witnessed the proud frigate's complete destruction, and forced her commander to lower his flag and hoist the white flag of truce.

Condell prepared now to receive the prisoners, but a few moments after the Huascar, elated by her destruction of the Esmeralda, was seen to glide around the projecting land south of the Iquique Bay (La Isla Blanca). She approached at full speed expecting to find her companion-at-arms the victor, but arrived too late to furnish him any assistance.

The gunboat retreated now southwards, whilst the monitor took aboard the crew of the Independencia and its commander, who felt his disgrace very keenly, and then proceeded on the route mapped out by President Prado.

livered his official statement and landed his wounded and dead. Soon after she steamed to Valparaiso to be repaired.

engagements. The heroism displayed by the little crew of the Esmeralda was worthy the Spartans, and stands as a solitary exam

Holger Birkedal.

CHAPTER XXIII.

It was yet very early. Annetta could not but grieve to reckon how many hours must elapse before she could hope to find Rodney

at his office.

Breakfast over and a visit made to camp where Jerry was found neither better nor worse, Annetta gladly felt that it was time to be away. While she hurried over her toilet, she heard the postman's heavy step and ring. A moment later Maggy knocked at her chamber door.

Annetta cried "Come in!" and took the proffered letter indifferently. She had no favored correspondents these sad days.

The postmark stirred her indifference fiercely. That darting hope, that suffocating dread, left her quite speechless. When Maggy's retreating footstep had died away, Annetta eyed the words "New York" a minute, and then desperately tore open the envelope.

Her hope, her dread, were utterly idle. And yet again had Treston appeared to her other than in the realm of dreams, if but by name alone.

The long rambling epistle was signed "Christie Shaw." A warm sisterly interest, which Annetta afterwards evidenced in pen and ink for the better prospects Mrs. Shaw diffusely chronicled, did not then awaken. Nor did Annetta find herself touched by a wifely assurance of "dear Tony's" improved habits. A feeling of suspended interest urged her eyes over the pages until they discovered this paragraph:

66 Tony begs me to tell you that he has seen two persons here whom you know. Mabel Follinsbee is married and living in

Brooklyn. . . . The Mr. Preston, or Treston, whom Tony met at your house last summer, looks ten years instead of one year older. Tony thought Mr. T. wished to avoid him, and so did not speak."

Rodney Bell's office was one of an indefinite many in a smart new building. His door, rarely closed, gave upon a central hallway. That snug professional interior formed a vista indifferently scanned by many passers-by. When, therefore, a black-robed feminine figure occupied, for several long successive hours of a certain day, a chair in Rodney's room, the fact could scarcely fail to excite attention and comment. Tom Bartmore's wife? No; his sister. Tom Bartmore? Why the wealthy street-contractor killed by a runaway team, or something in that way. The girl was a fine catch for most any fellow. Nonsense, there wouldn't be a pin-feather left when the lawyers had done plucking the estate to line their own nests.

Tompkins, Bell's very youthful clerk, driven by Annetta's continuing presence to smoke his long-nine in the anteroom of Attorney Weaver's chambers, with the student who daily wrestled there with Blackstone and the Code, imparted divers particulars concerning that feminine visitation. The interesting item that Tompkins's employer had quarreled with his fair principal was evolved amid clouds of strongly-flavored smoke.

"Rod suspected she'd hunt him up to-day," Tompkins further explained, his weed rele gated for the nonce to be played upon by his molars. "A lover's spat, you see. Rod's bound to bring her to terms. "If she looks mad,' he says, 'why you must let me know,

above, which the long rays of sunset, striking through some colored window, made glowingly beautiful.

Glowingly beautiful, too, was the face coming at his cheery call to look wonderingly down upon him. Yet, when Annetta slowly descended to greet him, with an embarrassed air, so changed were her looks that even Rodney observed them, asking innocently:

"Why, Netta! What on earth troubles you?"

"Your behavior!" said Annetta, and her breast began to heave stormily. Yet she shed no tears.

Annetta thought herself much happier after that evening's colloquy with her agent. In whatever renewal of faith the long and at times stormy interview resulted, she certainly did not consult Mr. Cyrus Baring as she had threatened. Yet accompanying her belief in a restored peace of mind were many signs indicative of some ever active anxiety.

Maggie could not appear unexpectedly in any room where her young mistress was, without becoming the unconscious object of a startled, even an apprehensive glance. What was Maggie come to say? Had she come to announce a visitor?

Moreover, every clash of the garden-gate, every footfall on the veranda, smote Annetta with swift pain, as sudden noises however easily accounted for will smite a person whose nerves are tensely strung.

She had one recurrent day-dream, into which dread entered as an inseparable element. Asked to account for her uneasiness she would have said, "That letter to Dan!"

The letter written in her agony over Rodney Bell's defection had been promptly despatched, following Dan's parting instructions. A week later, had not Annetta imagined the good lad already on his way in prompt obedience to her summons, she would have written, countermanding her recall, since the motive actuating it had ceased to be.

Dan did not reappear so promptly as Annetta's knowledge of his old haste to meet

her slightest wish led her to believe he would. A week, a fortnight, a month, passed. By that time her expectant mood had changShe commented secretly, and with some asperity, upon the fact that Dan's devotion, his faithfulness, had been above suspicion when she needed neither.

One morning, this turbid view of the affair still holding, she went to open the officedoor to the fresh air, as her wont was, and opened it to a person whose rapping there had been unheard.

Annetta gave a sharp little scream, as if the fine figure on the threshold, the glowing face, the beaming eyes, had been something spectral.

Dan was greatly improved. The old want of adaptation between his splendid contours and the confines of a modern business suit had disappeared. He moved as one born to fair linen and cassimere. His once sober, sturdy bearing had gained something in the way of resoluteness. His glance, as indeed his whole nature, seemed to ray out a delighted expectancy.

Submitting cold fingers to his eager clasp, Annetta was not without astonishment at finding herself nervous and abashed before Dan Meagher.

"O, Dan, what will you think of me! What will you say!" she cried apologetically. "I'd begun to hope that my foolish letter had happily missed you. You have been so long answering it."

And

"I couldn't leave until the superintendent found a new man to take my place. Mr. Divine wasn't easy satisfied, for he'd put every confidence in me, Miss Bartmore, always leaving me in charge of the mill when he was called to the city."

This, with a glow of honest self-assertion provoked by Annetta's unaccountable recep tion.

"What you tell me only makes me more worried: I hope you'll find it in your hear to forgive me."

"For God's sake, speak out!" ejaculated Dan, passing a hand (still rough with toil over a brow which was oozing forth a col perspiration.

"No, no!"-waving her off, and gazing down at her with that pale suspicion of mortal disaster which is apt precipitately to attack the most sanguine of lovers. Then hurriedly and timorously Annetta explained. "When I wrote you, I was certain of being able to offer you a good situation-you know I intimated as much."

"O well!" muttered Dan; but with a gusty exhalation of the breath he had been holding, he dropped into the nearest chair and hung his hat upon his knee.

"I had determined, indeed, to ask you to take the entire management and direction of the grading and filling-in still on hand."

"You've changed your mind?" queried Dan in an easy tone.

"It isn't my fault, Dan. A change was fairly forced upon me: I won't be happy unless I explain the whole thing to you."

Dan nodded, and Annetta went on, nervously twisting her fingers together.

"I wish I might leave Rodney Bell's name out of the explanation but it can't be done. You may recollect Mr. Bell. He was my poor brother's agent and is mine; my brother's friend and mine. Yes," with a slightly militant air, "whatever I feel obliged to tell you now, the trouble between us is all past."

As Annetta's cheeks flushed, Dan's paled. "When I sent for you, Mr. Bell and I were in the midst of a bitter disagreement. He had been acting coldly toward me, for how long I don't remember now. While I was wondering how to restore our former amicable relations, he suddenly brought maters to a climax by presenting a claim against he estate for twenty thousand odd dollars, to De collected out of the meager profits on the -road extension."

Dan whistled softly.

"I know it isn't loyal to him to rake up is buried trouble; but how else shall I exlain my conduct toward you? The worst to come. Mr. Bell didn't see fit to prent his claim openly. He thrust it in among veral others, assuring me that I need not VOL. III.-7.

"Did you sign that one?" queried Dan,

hotly.

What if Annetta's words had disclosed to his fancy a powerful rival? They had also put in his hands a weapon wherewith to slay.

"I discovered the trick-we had a dreadful quarrel. I forgave him when he tore the paper into fragments, and solemnly swore never to speak of it again: I forgave him— for Tom's sake."

"He destroyed the claim!" cried Dan, noting with jealous eyes the blush burning Annetta's cheeks, the blush in which she tried to atone for her disloyalty to Bell. "And you forgave his deception!"

"For Tom's sake. And I feel only mortification at telling you. But I must help you to picture the state of mind I was in when I believed Bell-the man Tom trusted —and I trust utterly false."

"Humph!" muttered Dan.

"Then it was I wrote for you. But after Rodney destroyed his claim, agreeing to waive his right to the money-to end all our disagreements forever, as he said he offered to buy up all the unfinished contracts of the esate, to rent teams and stables, and in short, to rid me of all the anxiety of trying to carry on a business which had so far resulted disastrously."

Dan lifted his straight black eyebrows in silent questioning.

"I trust you won't think me egregiously selfish. I was so glad to be quit of it all, after the failure on the-road." "Failure?"

"The property-owners have protested, you know."

"I hope Mr. Bell treated you handsomely in settling for the unfinished contracts, teams, etc."

"He's to pay me in installments, the first of which will very soon be due."

"I wish you had insisted upon cash down," pondered Dan. To be promptly rewarded for his gratuitous interest in Annetta's affairs by a proud sentence:

"I have Mr. Bell's word." Thus she en