fference: the wine is called
Moselle."

Now be it here observed that Don Ignacio drank very little wine or
stimulants of any sort, and never by any chance a drop from any vessel
which, with his single bright eye, he did not see his host first indulge
in. This self-imposed sacrifice may have been owing to his diffidence,
or modesty, or deference to Captain Brand, or, perhaps, other and
private reasons of his own; but yet he never broke through that rule of
politeness and abstemiousness. Sometimes, indeed, he carried his
principles so far as to refuse a meat or the fruits which his host had
not partaken of, and always with a slow shake of his brown fore finger,
as if he did not like even to smell the dish presented to him.

"What! not even a sip of that nectar, _compadre mio_?"

The compadre shook his digit, and observed that drinking nectar
sometimes made people sick.

The captain laughed gayly, and said, "Bah! learning to drink does the
harm, and not the art, when properly acquired."

During all the foregoing interlude the doctor remained in his grave,
calm humor, and only when the captain alluded to the lady whose
husband's name escaped him did he show signs of interest. Then his eye
followed the look toward the miniature, and his jaws came together with
a slight grating spasm.

Padre Ricardo, however, was in excellent sympathetic spirits, eating and
drinking like a glutton of all within his reach, and turning his full
eyes at times, as if to a deity, upon his friend the captain. Once he
spoke--

"But, my son, you were talking of leaving this quiet retreat, where we
have passed so many happy hours."

"Yes, friend of my soul! Those fellows with commissions, and pennants at
their mast-heads, and guns, and what not, seem determined to do us a
mischief." The devout padre crossed himself, and pressed the crucifix to
his greasy lips. "Ay! they would no doubt arraign us before some one of
their legal tribunals. Put us in prison, perhaps; or maybe give us a
slight squeeze in a rope or iron collar!"

The padre groaned audibly, and dropped the wing of a teal he was
gnawing, forgetting, strange as it may seem, to cross himself.

"_Hola, mi padre!_ cheer up! We are worth a million of dead men yet. The
world is wide, the sea open, and with a stout plank under our feet and
one of these fellows"--here he balanced a long carving-knife, dripping
with blood-red gravy, in his hand--"in our belts, who can stop us?"

There wa