us, and rode forward
to his death."

"A brave story."

"You would say so, did you know the whole of it. There is no man alive
whose hand I could grasp as proudly as I grasped his at the last: and no
other, alive or dead, of whom I could say, with the same conviction,
that he made me at once think worse of myself and better of human
nature."

"He seems, then, to have a mania for improving his fellow-men; for,"
said my guide, still pausing with the candle aloft and twinkling on his
spectacles, "I assure you he has been trying to make a Lutheran of
_me!_"

Wholly incredulous as I was, this took me fairly between wind and water.
"Did he," I stammered, "did he happen to mention the Scarlet Woman?"

"Several times: though (in justice to his delicacy, I must say it) only
in his delirium."

"His delirium?"

"He has been ill; almost desperately ill. A case of sunstroke, I
believe. Do I understand that you believe sufficiently to follow me?"

"I cannot say that I believe. Yet if it be not Captain Alan McNeill,
and if for some purpose which--to be frank with you--I cannot guess, I
am being walked into a trap, you may take credit to yourself that it has
been well, nay excellently, invented. I pay you that compliment
beforehand, and for my kinsman's sake, or for the sake of his memory, I
accept the risk."

"There is no risk," answered the reverend father, at once leading the
way: "none, that is to say, with me to guide you."

"There is risk, then, in some degree?"

"We skirt a labyrinth," he answered quietly. "You will have observed,
of course, that no one has passed us or disturbed our talk. To be sure,
the archway under which you found me is one of the 'false entrances,' as
they are called, of Rueda cellars. There are a dozen between this and
the summit, and perhaps half a dozen below, which give easy access to
the wine-vaults, and in any of which a crowd of goers and comers would
have incommoded us. For the soldiers would seem--and very wisely, I
must allow--to follow a chart and confine themselves to the easier
outskirts of these caves. Wisely, because the few cellars they visit
contain Val de Penas enough to keep two armies drunk until either
Wellington enters Madrid or Marmont recaptures Salamanca. But they are
not adventurous: and the few who dare, though no doubt they penetrate to
better wine, are not in the end to be envied. . . . Now this passage of
ours is popularly, but quite erroneously, suppos