, "and over this interval of
twilight, as you know, I have been given complete control. Look to the
West."

As the Padre turned, the stranger took his enormous hat from his head,
and waved it three times before him. At each sweep of the prodigious
feather, the fog grew thinner, until it melted impalpably away, and the
former landscape returned, yet warm with the glowing sun. As Father Jose
gazed, a strain of martial music arose from the valley, and, issuing
from a deep _canon_, the good Father beheld a long cavalcade of gallant
cavaliers, habited like his companion. As they swept down the plain,
they were joined by like processions, that slowly defiled from every
ravine and _canon_ of the mysterious mountain. From time to time the
peal of a trumpet swelled fitfully upon the breeze; the cross of
Santiago glittered, and the royal banners of Castile and Aragon waved
over the moving column. So they moved on solemnly toward the sea, where,
in the distance, Father Jose saw stately caravels, bearing the same
familiar banner, awaiting them. The good Padre gazed with conflicting
emotions, and the serious voice of the stranger broke the silence.

"Thou hast beheld, Sir Priest, the fading footprints of adventurous
Castile. Thou hast seen the declining glory of old Spain,--declining as
yonder brilliant sun. The sceptre she hath wrested from the heathen is
fast dropping from her decrepit and fleshless grasp. The children she
hath fostered shall know her no longer. The soil she hath acquired shall
be lost to her as irrevocably as she herself hath thrust the Moor from
her own Granada."

The stranger paused, and his voice seemed broken by emotion; at the same
time, Father Jose, whose sympathising heart yearned toward the departing
banners, cried, in poignant accents,--

"Farewell, ye gallant cavaliers and Christian soldiers! Farewell, thou,
Nunez de Balboa! thou, Alonzo de Ojeda! and thou, most venerable Las
Casas! Farewell, and may Heaven prosper still the seed ye left behind!"

Then turning to the stranger, Father Jose beheld him gravely draw his
pocket-handkerchief from the basket-hilt of his rapier, and apply it
decorously to his eyes.

"Pardon this weakness, Sir Priest," said the cavalier, apologetically;
"but these worthy gentlemen were ancient friends of mine, and have done
me many a delicate service,--much more, perchance, than these poor
sables may signify," he added, with a grim gesture toward the mourning
suit he wore