is something touching in the warm pleasure he remembers and records

at this meeting with the professional mentor of his boyhood.
We discover then that, no Spaniard being forthcoming for the

service, this worthyseaman with the unique pigtail and a very high
character for courage and steadiness had been selected as messenger

for one of these missions inland which have been mentioned. His
preparations were not elaborate. One gloomy autumn morning the

sloop ran close to a shallow cove where a landing could be made on
that iron-bound shore. A boat was lowered, and pulled in with Tom

Corbin (Cuba Tom) perched in the bow, and our young man (Mr. Edgar
Byrne was his name on this earth which knows him no more) sitting

in the stern sheets.
A few inhabitants of a hamlet, whose grey stone houses could be

seen a hundred yards or so up a deep ravine, had come down to the
shore and watched the approach of the boat. The two Englishmen

leaped ashore. Either from dullness or astonishment the peasants
gave no greeting, and only fell back in silence.

Mr. Byrne had made up his mind to see Tom Corbin started fairly on
his way. He looked round at the heavy surprised faces.

"There isn't much to get out of them," he said. "Let us walk up to
the village. There will be a wine shop for sure where we may find

somebody more promising to talk to and get some information from."
"Aye, aye, sir," said Tom falling into step behind his officer. "A

bit of palaver as to courses and distances can do no harm; I
crossed the broadest part of Cuba by the help of my tongue tho'

knowing far less Spanish than I do now. As they say themselves it
was 'four words and no more' with me, that time when I got left

behind on shore by the Blanche, frigate."
He made light of what was before him, which was but a day's journey

into the mountains. It is true that there was a full day's journey
before striking the mountain path, but that was nothing for a man

who had crossed the island of Cuba on his two legs, and with no
more than four words of the language to begin with.

The officer and the man were walking now on a thick sodden bed of
dead leaves, which the peasants thereabouts accumulate in the

streets of their villages to rot during the winter for field
manure. Turning his head Mr. Byrne perceived that the whole male

population of the hamlet was following them on the noiseless
springy carpet. Women stared from the doors of the houses and the

children had apparently gone into hiding. The village knew the
ship by sight, afar off, but no stranger had landed on that spot

perhaps for a hundred years or more. The cocked hat of Mr. Byrne,
the bushy whiskers and the enormous pigtail of the sailor, filled

them with mute wonder. They pressed behind the two Englishmen
staring like those islanders discovered by Captain Cook in the

South Seas.
It was then that Byrne had his first glimpse of the little cloaked

man in a yellow hat. Faded and dingy as it was, this covering for
his head made him noticeable.

The entrance to the wine shop was like a rough hole in a wall of
flints. The owner was the only person who was not in the street,

for he came out from the darkness at the back where the inflated
forms of wine skins hung on nails could be vaguely distinguished.

He was a tall, one-eyed Asturian with scrubby, hollow cheeks; a
grave expression of countenance contrasted enigmatically with the

roaming restlessness of his solitary eye. On learning that the
matter in hand was the sending on his way of that English mariner

toward a certain Gonzales in the mountains, he closed his good eye
for a moment as if in meditation. Then opened it, very lively

again.
"Possibly, possibly. It could be done."

A friendly murmur arose in the group in the doorway at the name of
Gonzales, the local leader against the French. Inquiring as to the

safety of the road Byrne was glad to learn that no troops of that
nation had been seen in the neighbourhood for months. Not the

smallest little detachment of these impious POLIZONES. While
giving these answers the owner of the wine-shop busied himself in

drawing into an earthenware jug some wine which he set before the
heretic English, pocketing with grave abstraction the small piece

of money the officer threw upon the table in recognition of the
unwritten law that none may enter a wine-shop without buying drink.

His eye was in constantmotion as if it were trying to do the work
of the two; but when Byrne made inquiries as to the possibility of

hiring a mule, it became immovably fixed in the direction of the
door which was closely besieged by the curious. In front of them,

just within the threshold, the little man in the large cloak and
yellow hat had taken his stand. He was a diminutive person, a mere

homunculus, Byrne describes him, in a ridiculously mysterious, yet
assertive attitude, a corner of his cloak thrown cavalierly over

his left shoulder, muffling his chin and mouth; while the broad-
brimmed yellow hat hung on a corner of his square little head. He

stood there taking snuff, repeatedly.
"A mule," repeated the wine-seller, his eyes fixed on that quaint

and snuffy figure. . . "No, senor officer! Decidedly no mule is to
be got in this poor place."

The coxswain, who stood by with the true sailor's air of unconcern
in strange surroundings, struck in quietly -

"If your honour will believe me Shank's pony's the best for this
job. I would have to leave the beast somewhere, anyhow, since the

captain has told me that half my way will be along paths fit only
for goats."

The diminutive man made a step forward, and speaking through the
folds of the cloak which seemed to muffle a sarcastic intention -

"Si, senor. They are too honest in this village to have a single
mule amongst them for your worship's service. To that I can bear

testimony. In these times it's only rogues or very clever men who
can manage to have mules or any other four-footed beasts and the

wherewithal to keep them. But what this valiantmariner wants is a
guide; and here, senor, behold my brother-in-law, Bernardino, wine-

seller, and alcade of this most Christian and hospitable village,
who will find you one."

This, Mr. Byrne says in his relation, was the only thing to do. A
youth in a ragged coat and goat-skin breeches was produced after

some more talk. The English officer stood treat to the whole
village, and while the peasants drank he and Cuba Tom took their

departure accompanied by the guide. The diminutive man in the
cloak had disappeared.

Byrne went along with the coxswain out of the village. He wanted
to see him fairly on his way; and he would have gone a greater

distance, if the seaman had not suggested respectfully the
advisability of return so as not to keep the ship a moment longer

than necessary so close in with the shore on such an unpromising
looking morning. A wild gloomy sky hung over their heads when they

took leave of each other, and their surroundings of rank bushes and
stony fields were dreary.

"In four days' time," were Byrne's last words, "the ship will stand
in and send a boat on shore if the weather permits. If not you'll

have to make it out on shore the best you can till we come along to
take you off."

"Right you are, sir," answered Tom, and strode on. Byrne watched
him step out on a narrow path. In a thick pea-jacket with a pair

of pistols in his belt, a cutlass by his side, and a stout cudgel
in his hand, he looked a sturdy figure and well able to take care

of himself. He turned round for a moment to wave his hand, giving
to Byrne one more view of his honest bronzed face with bushy

whiskers. The lad in goatskin breeches looking, Byrne says, like a
faun or a young satyr leaping ahead, stopped to wait for him, and

then went off at a bound. Both disappeared.
Byrne turned back. The hamlet was hidden in a fold of the ground,

and the spot seemed the most lonely corner of the earth and as if
accursed in its uninhabited desolate barrenness. Before he had

walked many yards, there appeared very suddenly from behind a bush
the muffled up diminutive Spaniard. Naturally Byrne stopped short.