ortugal, being his first glimpse of conventuals in Latin countries,
had deeply shocked him. The vows of a monastic poverty that was kept
carefully beyond the walls of the monastery offended his sense of
propriety. That men who had vowed themselves to pauperism, who wore
coarse garments and went barefoot, should batten upon rich food and
store up wines that gold could not purchase, struck him as a hideous
incongruity.

"And the monks drink this nectar?" he said aloud, and laughed
sneeringly. "I know the breed--the fair found belly wi' fat capon lined.
Tha's your poverty stricken Capuchin."

Souza looked at him in sudden alarm, bethinking himself that all
Englishmen were heretics, and knowing nothing of subtle distinctions
between English and Irish. In silence Butler finished the third and last
bottle, and his thoughts fixed themselves with increasing insistence
upon a wine reputed better than this of which there was great store in
the cellars of the convent of Tavora.

Abruptly he asked: "Where's Tavora?" He was thinking perhaps of the
comfort that such wine would bring to a company of war-worn soldiers in
the valley of the Agueda.

"Some ten leagues from here," answered Souza, and pointed to a map that
hung upon the wall.

The lieutenant rose, and rolled a thought unsteadily across the room.
He was a tall, loose-limbed fellow, blue-eyed, fair-complexioned, with
a thatch of fiery red hair excellently suited to his temperament. He
halted before the map, and with legs wide apart, to afford him the
steadying support of a broad basis, he traced with his finger the course
of the Douro, fumbled about the district of Regoa, and finally hit upon
the place he sought.

"Why," he said, "seems to me 'sif we should ha' come that way. I's
shorrer road to Pesqueira than by the river."

"As the bird fly," said Souza. "But the roads be bad--just mule tracks,
while by the river the road is tolerable good."

"Yet," said the lieutenant, "I think I shall go back tha' way."

The fumes of the wine were mounting steadily to addle his indifferent
brains. Every moment he was seeing things in proportions more and more
false. His resentment against priests who, sworn to self-abnegation,
hoarded good wine, whilst soldiers sent to keep harm from priests' fat
carcasses were left to suffer cold and even hunger, was increasing with
every moment. He would sample that wine at Tavora; and he would bear
some of it away that his brother officers a