own mother. What had Millicent done so much better than I that she should have a son Philip, whilst mine perhaps was in his grave, or at the bottom of the cruel sea? And then sometimes I would think that my own Philip might even now be on his way home to me. Perhaps some kind souls in England had succoured him; and this thought made me gentle to my nephew, and I swore to myself that if my boy came back to me I would send Millicent's Philip to her again at any risk, heretic though he was. One day, when my nephew had been with me for a week, a messenger came with a letter for me. I did not know the handwriting, but my heart was bursting as I cut the ribbon, for I knew instinctively that it would tell me the fate of my son. It was from Don Pedro Valdez, from his home at Gijon; and as I patiently spelt it through without excitement or apparent emotion, I felt gradually turned to stone, except only my brain, which seemed on fire. It told. me that after Don Pedro had been basely deserted, disabled as he was, by the rest of the Armada, and was engaged alone with all the English fleet, to which he was about to surrender, my boy, with others, was swept off the deck by some falling wreckage. He fell into the water, and for safety swam to an English boat not far off to beg for quarter, and to surrender himself. He grasped the gunwale of the boat with both hands, and cried for quarter in English. Then a fiend in the boat shouted, with a brutal oath, "This is one of the English traitors," and, seizing a hatchet, he struck off my poor boy's two hands at the wrists, and, with a piteous cry, Philip's fair curly head sank into the crimson water to rise no more. No complaint fell from me. I shed no tears. I could not pray; and to Philip's frequent inquiry what ailed me I replied not a word. But at the hour of vespers I crept out of the house like a reptile to the palace of the Holy Office, and reported that my prisoner was a blasphemer and a heretic of the deepest dye. That night, when Philip was sleeping, the masked familiars came and took him away; and two days afterwards I was summoned to give my evidence against him. I swore falsely that he had scoffed and mocked at holy things and ridiculed the mass. In answer to it all he would say no word to the Inquisitors; but stood gazing upon them with his clear blue eyes, whilst his lips moved in prayer in English. It was hardly audible, but I caught the words, "Save my mother, and forgive those who unjustly persecute me." And, as I turned to go, an officer standing by him raised the butt of his pike and struck him on the mouth, to silence, as he said, the vile language of the heretics. But I was all unmoved and as cold as ice, for I had always before C me the picture of the two poor, maimed, bloody stumps of wrists and a fair curly head sinking under the red water. I saw Millicent's son once again. On the following Saturday there was a grand auto de fe in the Plaza Mayor in Madrid, and I sat in my balcony hard by in the Calle Mayor to see the procession go by. The street was crowded with people, and I could hear the hum of the great multitude in the square itself. And past my window there swept the stately procession of priests and bishops, with waving banners, swinging censers, and soaring crosses, followed by the wretches in their sambenitos surrounded by guards and the jeering populace. As they slowly passed my window, dragging their racked limbs painfully, a well-directed missile from the crowd struck the forehead of one of the condemned, knocking off the high conical hat he wore, and making a great red gash across the brow. Then I saw that the tortured wretch with a rope around his neck was my nephew Philip Sendye, and, as he cast up his eyes to look upon me, they were bright and glowing like stars, but with no reproach in them. His face seemed all shining and transfigured, and his fair curls waving in the wind made a golden halo round his head. And, as he passed from my view, the bleeding wrist-stumps faded from my vision for the first time for many days, and in their place I saw the face of my own Philip looking upon me, full of sadness and surprise, as if he did not know me. Then for the first time there swept over me, like a great wave, the appalling knowledge of my sin, and I screamed like a demoniac for them to save Philip Sendye and my own soul. But none heeded me, for the excitement was great; and by-and-by, when I grew calmer, I saw over the housetops in front of me the smoke rising and the glare reddening the sky, and, far above the reck, a white dove hung motionless over two fair Philips in shining raiment smiling upon me, hand in hand. SPECTROSCOPIC DOUBLE STARS. M ANY of the stars when examined with a good telescope are seen to be double, some triple, and a few quadruple and even multiple. These when viewed with the naked eye, or even a powerful binocular field glass, seem to be single, and show no sign of consisting of two components. Some of these telescopic double stars may be seen with instruments of moderate power, but in others the components are so close together that the highest powers of the largest telescopes are necessary to show them as anything but single stars. Optical double stars are those in which the component stars are merely apparently close together, owing to their being seen in nearly the same direction in space. Two stars may seem to be close together, while in reality one of them may be placed at an immense distance behind the other; just as two lighthouses at sea may, on a dark night, appear close together when viewed from a certain position, whereas they may be really miles apart. In the case of double stars it is, of course, always difficult to determine whether the apparent closeness of the components is real or merely optical. But when, from a long series of observations of their relative positions, we find that one of them is apparently moving round the other, we know that the stars must be comparatively close and linked together by some physical bond of union. These most interesting objects are known to astronomers as binary, or revolving double stars. Many of them have been watched for a number of years, and their period of revolu tion and other details respecting their orbits have been computed by astronomers. Their periods vary from about eleven years to over one thousand. A new class of binary stars has been discovered in recent year by the aid of the spectroscope. These have been called "spectro scopic binaries," and are supposed to consist of two component stars so close together that the highest powers of our largest telescopes fail to show them as anything but single stars! Indeed, the velocities indicated by the spectroscope show that they must be so close that the components will probably for ever remain invisible by the most powerful telescopes which could ever be constructed by man. In some of these remarkable objects, the doubling of the spectral lines indicates that the components are both bright bodies, but in the case of the variable star Algol, at least, as the lines are merely shifted from their normal position, not doubled, it would seem that one of the components is a dark body, or at least gives so little light that its spectrum is not perceptible. In either case the motion in the line of sight can be measured by the spectroscope, and we can therefore calculate the actual dimensions of the system in miles, and thence its mass in terms of the mass of the sun, although the star's distance from the earth remains unknown. Judging, however, from the brightness of the star and the character of its spectrum we can make an estimate of its probable distance from the earth. Let us first consider the case of Algol. This famous variable star has, according to the Draper Catalogue, a spectrum of the first or Sirian type. It may therefore be comparable with that brilliant star in intrinsic brightness and density. Assuming the mass of Sirius at 2:20 times the mass of the sun, as determined by Auwers, and that of the bright component of Algol at four-ninths of the sun's mass, as found by Vogel, I find that for the same distance Sirius would be about 2.8 times brighter than Algol. But photometric measures show that Sirius is about 22 times brighter than Algol, from which it follows-since light varies inversely as the square of the distance -that Algol is 2'77 times farther from the earth than Sirius. Assuming the parallax of Sirius at o'39", this would give for the parallax of Algol o'14", or a journey for light of about 23 years. From the dimensions of the system as given by Vogel-about 3,230,000 miles from centre to centre of the components-this parallax would give an apparent distance between the components of less than the two-hundredth of a second of arc, a quantity much too small to be visible in our largest telescopes, or probably in any telescope which man can ever construct. It is therefore no matter for surprise that Burnham, the famous observer of double stars, failed to see any trace of duplicity in Algol with the highest powers of the great telescope of the Lick Observatory. From a consideration of irregularities in the proper motion of Algol and in the period of its light changes, Dr. Chandler infers the existence of a second dark body, and a parallax of o'07". As this is exactly onehalf the parallax found above, it implies a distance just double of what I have found, and would, of course, indicate that Algol is intrinsically four times brighter than Sirius. This greater brilliancy would suggest greater heat, and would agree with its small density, which, from its diameter in miles, as given by Vogel, I find to be only one-third of that of water. Let us now consider the case of Beta Aurige, which spectroscopic observations show to be a close binary star with a period of about four days, and a distance between the components of about eight millions of miles. This period and distance imply that the mass of the system is about five times that of the sun. As in this case the spectral lines are doubled at regular intervals of two days, and not merely shifted from their normal position, as in the case of Algol, we may conclude that both the components are bright bodies, and we may not be far wrong in supposing that they are of equal mass, each having 2 times the mass of the sun. As the spectrum of Beta Auriga is of the same type as Sirius, we may compare it with that star, as we did in the case of Algol. Assuming the same density and intrinsic brightness for both Beta Auriga and Sirius, I find that Beta Auriga should be about twice as bright as Sirius. Now, according to the Oxford photometric measures, Sirius is 2.89 magnitudes, or 14:32 times brighter than Beta Auriga. Hence it follows that the distance of Beta Auriga should be about 5 times greater than that of Sirius, and assuming the parallax of Sirius at o'39", that of Beta Aurige would be about o‘061". From actual measures of the parallax of Beta Aurige made by the late Professor Pritchard at Oxford, he found from two comparison stars a mean parallax of 0.062", a result in remarkably close agreement with that computed above from a consideration of the star's mass and brightness compared with that of Sirius. As the actual distance between the components of Beta Auriga is equal to the sun's distance from the earth. divided by 11.625, it follows that the maximum angular separation between the components is equal to o'062" divided by 11-625, or about th of a second, or nearly the same as in the case of Algol. The bright star Spica has also been found by the spectroscope to be a close binary star. Vogel finds a period of four days, with a distance between the components of about 6 millions of miles, and assuming that the components are of equal mass, and are moving in a circular orbit, he finds that the mass of the system is about 2.6 times the mass of our sun. This would give each of the components 1'3 times the mass of the sun, and it follows that the light of Spicawhich has a spectrum of the Sirian type-should for equal distances exceed that of Sirius about 1'4 times. Now, the photometric measures at Oxford show that Sirius is 191 magnitude, or 5-8 times brighter than Spica. Hence it follows that the distance of Spica should be |