dares!” he exclaimed; and, with a fearful mocking laugh; flung himself headlong down, ere the soldiers had recovered his first sudden movement.  Stanley alone retained presence of mind sufficient to dart forward, regardless of his own imminent danger, in the vain hope of arresting the leap; but quick as were his movements, he only reached the brink in time to see the wretched man, one moment quivering in air, and lost the next in a dark abyss of shade.

A cry of mingled disappointment, horror, and execration, burst from all around; and several of the soldiers hastened from the battlements to the base of the rock, determined on fighting the arch-fiend himself, if, as many of them firmly believed, he had rendered Don Luis invulnerable to air, and would wait there to receive him.  But even this heroic resolution was disappointed:  the height was so tremendous, and the velocity of the fall so frightful, that the action of the air had not only deprived him of life, but actually loosed the limbs from the trunk, and a fearfully mangled corpse was all that remained to glut the vengeance of the infuriated soldiers.

The confusion and excitement attending this important event, spread like wildfire; not only over Albania, but reaching to the Duke’s camp without the city.  To send off the momentous information to the King, was instantly decided upon; and young Stanley, as the person principally concerned, selected for the mission.

Ferdinand was astonished and indignant, and greatly disappointed that justice had been so eluded; but that such a monster, whose machinations seemed, in their subtlety and secrecy, to prevent all defeat, no longer cumbered Spain, was in itself a relief so great both to monarch and people, as after the first burst of indignation to cause universal rejoicings.

It so happened that Ferdinand had been desirous of Stanley’s presence for some weeks; letters from Isabella, some little time previous, had expressed an earnest desire for the young man’s return to Saragossa, if only for a visit of a few days.  This was then impossible.  Three months had elapsed since Isabella’s first communication; within the last two she had not again reverted to Stanley; but the King, thinking she had merely refrained from doing so, because of its present impossibility, gladly seized the opportunity of his appearance at Seville, to dispatch him, as envoy extraordinary, on both public and private business, to the court of Arragon.

Isabella was surrounded by her ministers and nobles when Stanley was conducted to her presence; she received him with cordiality and graciousness, asked many and eager questions concerning her husband and the progress of his arms, entered minutely into the affair of Don Luis, congratulated him on his having been the hand destined to unmask the traitor and bring him low; gave her full attention on the instant to the communications from the King, with which he was charged; occupied