im, he looked as
closely at my guide, who was just coming up. I saw the guide turn pale,
and pull up with an air of evident alarm. "An unlucky meeting!" thought
I to myself. But prudence instantly counselled me not to let any symptom
of anxiety escape me. So I dismounted. I told the guide to take off the
horses' bridles, and kneeling down beside the spring, I laved my head
and hands and then drank a long draught, lying flat on my belly, like
Gideon's soldiers.

Meanwhile, I watched the stranger, and my own guide. This last seemed to
come forward unwillingly. But the other did not appear to have any evil
designs upon us. For he had turned his horse loose, and the blunderbuss,
which he had been holding horizontally, was now dropped earthward.

Not thinking it necessary to take offence at the scant attention paid
me, I stretched myself full length upon the grass, and calmly asked the
owner of the blunderbuss whether he had a light about him. At the same
time I pulled out my cigar-case. The stranger, still without opening his
lips, took out his flint, and lost no time in getting me a light. He was
evidently growing tamer, for he sat down opposite to me, though he still
grasped his weapon. When I had lighted my cigar, I chose out the best I
had left, and asked him whether he smoked.

"Yes, senor," he replied. These were the first words I had heard him
speak, and I noticed that he did not pronounce the letter _s_* in the
Andalusian fashion, whence I concluded he was a traveller, like myself,
though, maybe, somewhat less of an archaeologist.

* The Andalusians aspirate the _s_, and pronounce it like
the soft _c_ and the _z_, which Spaniards pronounce like the
English _th_. An Andalusian may always be recognised by the
way in which he says _senor_.

"You'll find this a fairly good one," said I, holding out a real Havana
regalia.

He bowed his head slightly, lighted his cigar at mine, thanked me
with another nod, and began to smoke with a most lively appearance of
enjoyment.

"Ah!" he exclaimed, as he blew his first puff of smoke slowly out of his
ears and nostrils. "What a time it is since I've had a smoke!"

In Spain the giving and accepting of a cigar establishes bonds of
hospitality similar to those founded in Eastern countries on the
partaking of bread and salt. My friend turned out more talkative than
I had hoped. However, though he claimed to belong to the _partido_ of
Montilla, he seemed ver