maliciously foreseen it would. It was out of the question, he

said. Then let them starve, said I, for I have no sympathy with
tatterdemalion pride. There-upon we separated, not very content

with one another; but yesterday, to my wonder, the Padre returned
and made a submission: the difficulty, he said, he had found upon

enquiry to be less than he had feared; or, in other words, these
proud people had put their pride in their pocket. I closed with

the offer; and, subject to your approval, I have taken rooms for
you in the residencia. The air of these mountains will renew your

blood; and the quiet in which you will there live is worth all the
medicines in the world.'

'Doctor,' said I, 'you have been throughout my good angel, and your
advice is a command. But tell me, if you please, something of the

family with which I am to reside.'
'I am coming to that,' replied my friend; 'and, indeed, there is a

difficulty in the way. These beggars are, as I have said, of very
high descent and swollen with the most baseless vanity; they have

lived for some generations in a growing isolation, drawing away, on
either hand, from the rich who had now become too high for them,

and from the poor, whom they still regarded as too low; and even
to-day, when poverty forces them to unfasten their door to a guest,

they cannot do so without a most ungracious stipulation. You are
to remain, they say, a stranger; they will give you attendance, but

they refuse from the first the idea of the smallest intimacy.'
I will not deny that I was piqued, and perhaps the feeling

strengthened my desire to go, for I was confident that I could
break down that barrier if I desired. 'There is nothing offensive

in such a stipulation,' said I; 'and I even sympathise with the
feeling that inspired it.'

'It is true they have never seen you,' returned the doctor
politely; 'and if they knew you were the handsomest and the most

pleasant man that ever came from England (where I am told that
handsome men are common, but pleasant ones not so much so), they

would doubtless make you welcome with a better grace. But since
you take the thing so well, it matters not. To me, indeed, it

seems discourteous. But you will find yourself the gainer. The
family will not much tempt you. A mother, a son, and a daughter;

an old woman said to be halfwitted, a country lout, and a country
girl, who stands very high with her confessor, and is, therefore,'

chuckled the physician, 'most likely plain; there is not much in
that to attract the fancy of a dashing officer.'

'And yet you say they are high-born,' I objected.
'Well, as to that, I should distinguish,' returned the doctor.

'The mother is; not so the children. The mother was the last
representative of a princely stock, degenerate both in parts and

fortune. Her father was not only poor, he was mad: and the girl
ran wild about the residencia till his death. Then, much of the

fortune having died with him, and the family being quite extinct,
the girl ran wilder than ever, until at last she married, Heaven

knows whom, a muleteer some say, others a smuggler; while there are
some who uphold there was no marriage at all, and that Felipe and

Olalla are bastards. The union, such as it was, was tragically
dissolved some years ago; but they live in such seclusion, and the

country at that time was in so much disorder, that the precise
manner of the man's end is known only to the priest - if even to

him.'
'I begin to think I shall have strange experiences,' said I.

'I would not romance, if I were you,' replied the doctor; 'you will
find, I fear, a very grovelling and commonplacereality. Felipe,

for instance, I have seen. And what am I to say? He is very
rustic, very cunning, very loutish, and, I should say, an innocent;

the others are probably to match. No, no, senor commandante, you
must seek congenial society among the great sights of our

mountains; and in these at least, if you are at all a lover of the
works of nature, I promise you will not be disappointed.'

The next day Felipe came for me in a rough country cart, drawn by a
mule; and a little before the stroke of noon, after I had said

farewell to the doctor, the innkeeper, and different good souls who
had befriended me during my sickness, we set forth out of the city

by the Eastern gate, and began to ascend into the Sierra. I had
been so long a prisoner, since I was left behind for dying after

the loss of the convoy, that the mere smell of the earth set me
smiling. The country through which we went was wild and rocky,

partially covered with rough woods, now of the cork-tree, and now
of the great Spanish chestnut, and frequently intersected by the

beds of mountain torrents. The sun shone, the wind rustled
joyously; and we had advanced some miles, and the city had already

shrunk into an inconsiderable knoll upon the plain behind us,
before my attention began to be diverted to the companion of my

drive. To the eye, he seemed but a diminutive, loutish, well-made
country lad, such as the doctor had described, mighty quick and

active, but devoid of any culture; and this first impression was
with most observers final. What began to strike me was his

familiar, chattering talk; so strangelyinconsistent with the terms
on which I was to be received; and partly from his imperfect

enunciation, partly from the sprightly incoherence of the matter,
so very difficult to follow clearly without an effort of the mind.

It is true I had before talked with persons of a similar mental
constitution; persons who seemed to live (as he did) by the senses,

taken and possessed by the visual object of the moment and unable
to discharge their minds of that impression. His seemed to me (as

I sat, distantly giving ear) a kind of conversation proper to
drivers, who pass much of their time in a great vacancy of the

intellect and threading the sights of a familiar country. But this
was not the case of Felipe; by his own account, he was a home-

keeper; 'I wish I was there now,' he said; and then, spying a tree
by the wayside, he broke off to tell me that he had once seen a

crow among its branches.
'A crow?' I repeated, struck by the ineptitude of the remark, and

thinking I had heard imperfectly.
But by this time he was already filled with a new idea; hearkening

with a rapt intentness, his head on one side, his face puckered;
and he struck me rudely, to make me hold my peace. Then he smiled

and shook his head.
'What did you hear?' I asked.

'O, it is all right,' he said; and began encouraging his mule with
cries that echoed unhumanly up the mountain walls.

I looked at him more closely. He was superlatively well-built,
light, and lithe and strong; he was well-featured; his yellow eyes

were very large, though, perhaps, not very expressive; take him
altogether, he was a pleasant-looking lad, and I had no fault to

find with him, beyond that he was of a dusky hue, and inclined to
hairyness; two characteristics that I disliked. It was his mind

that puzzled, and yet attracted me. The doctor's phrase - an
innocent - came back to me; and I was wondering if that were, after

all, the true description, when the road began to go down into the
narrow and naked chasm of a torrent. The waters thundered

tumultuously in the bottom; and the ravine was filled full of the
sound, the thin spray, and the claps of wind, that accompanied

their descent. The scene was certainly impressive; but the road
was in that part very securely walled in; the mule went steadily

forward; and I was astonished to perceive the paleness of terror in
the face of my companion. The voice of that wild river was

inconstant, now sinking lower as if in weariness, now doubling its
hoarse tones; momentary freshets seemed to swell its volume,

sweeping down the gorge, raving and booming against the barrier
walls; and I observed it was at each of these accessions to the

clamour, that my driver more particularly winced and blanched.
Some thoughts of Scottish superstition and the river Kelpie, passed

across my mind; I wondered if perchance the like were prevalent in
that part of Spain; and turning to Felipe, sought to draw him out.

'What is the matter?' I asked.
'O, I am afraid,' he replied.