Her brother was a gentle and beautiful boy.  A tender spirit of melancholy seemed ever uppermost in his heart and face, and it had been thus with him since he had known his first early grief-the loss of his mother-some four or five years before the present period of our story.  Isabella, though she was not wanting in natural tenderness and affection, had yet outgrown the loss of her parent; but the more sensitive spirit of the boy had not yet recovered from the shock it had thus received.  The father even feared that he never would regain his happy buoyancy, as he looked upon his pale and almost transparent features, while the boy mused thoughtfully to himself sometimes for the hour together, if left alone and undisturbed.

“Ruez, dear, we’ve not been on the Plato since that fearful night,” said Senorita Isabella, as she rested her hand gently upon the boy’s shoulder.

“It was a fearful night, sister,” said the boy recalling the associations with a shudder.

“And yet how clear and beautiful it seemed just before that terrible accident.”

“I remember,” said the boy.

“And the slaver in the distance, with her soft white sails and treacherous business.”

“And the sparkling moon upon the bay.”

“It was very beautiful; and we have a night now almost its equal.”

“Did you notice how stoutly that Lieutenant Bezan swam with me?”

“Yes, brother.  You forget, though, that he is Captain Bezan now,” she added.

“Father told me so,” said the boy.  “How fearfully the tide ran, and the current set against us!  He held me way up above the water, while he was quite under it himself,” continued Ruez.  “I was sure he would drown; didn’t it seem so to you, sister?”

“It did, it did; the deed was most gallantly done,” said Isabella, as she stooped down and kissed her brother; “and you will never be so careless again, Ruez?”

“No, sister.  I shall be more. careful, but I should like to see that Captain Bezan again.  I have never seen him since that night, and his barracks are within pistol shot from here.”

“Hark! what was that?” asked Isabella, starting at some unusual noise.

“I heard nothing,” said the boy.

“There it is again,” she continued, nervously, looking around.

“Down, Carlo, down,” said the boy, sharply to the hound, as it sprang at the same time from a crouching posture, and uttered a deep, angry growl, peculiar to its species.

But the animal seemed too much aroused to be so easily pacified with words, and with heavy bounds sprang towards the seaward end of the Plato, over the parapet of which, where it joined a lofty stone wall that made a portion of the stone barracks of the army, a man leaped to the ground.  The hound suddenly crouched, the moment it fairly reached the figure of the new coiner, and instead of the hostile attitude, it had so lately he assumed, now placed its fore paws upon the breast of the person, and wagged its tail with evident tokens of pleasure at the meeting.