family, with the full sanction of the biped denizens
below.

"The social position of these long-legged gentry all over the
peninsula," said L'Isle, "is one of the characteristics of the
country. It is astonishing what an amount of respect, and an immunity
from harm, they enjoy. I am afraid they would fare worse at the hands
of the more brutal part of our English populace. They are useful, too;
but are more indebted for their safety, and the respect shown them
here, to the clerical gravity of their demeanor."

They had now reached their lodgings, and were soon after joined by the
commissary, who came in rubbing his hands, and exclaiming: "Capital
bargains to be made here! Corn plenty, and bullocks that would make a
figure in Smithfield. Some farmers have not threshed last year's
crop. A curious country this: one province starving, and plenty in the
next. It is all owing to the want of roads. But, luckily, Elvas is not
far off."

"Yet the Romans," L'Isle remarked, "had once netted over the whole
Peninsula with roads."

"When they went away," said the commissary, "the first thing the
people of the country did, I suppose, was to let them go to ruin in
true Portuguese fashion."

Shortridge now said that he must spend some days in the neighborhood
of Evora, and that the party would have to return to Elvas without
him. This being agreed to, Lady Mabel suggested that they should find
their way back by a different route, and, on consulting the muleteer,
they found that it could be done without much lengthening their
journey.

CHAPTER XI.

Led with delight they thus beguile the way
* * * *
When weening to return whence they did stray,
They cannot find that path, which first was showne,
But wander to and fro in ways unknown,
Furthest from end then, when they nearest weene,
That makes them doubt their wits be not their own,
So many paths, so many turning seene,
That which of them to take in diverse doubt they been.

Faerie Queene.

The party mustered early the next morning to continue their journey,
and after breakfast L'Isle called for the innkeeper to pay him his
bill. This worthy, acting on the natural supposition that the English
had come into the country to indemnify the Portuguese for their losses
at the hands of the French, at once named the round sum of sixty
_crusados_. On L'Isle looking surprised, he began to