yet great of heart,
saturnine yet gentlemanly; and their peculiarity was that though six
were killed one day seven would invariably be seen the next. The most
gorgeously apparelled of them all, entering the sacristy, flung a purse
of gold to the Superior, while a scalding tear coursed down his sunburnt
cheek; and this he dried with a noble gesture and a richly embroidered
handkerchief! In a whirlwind of romantic properties I read of a wicked
miser who refused to support his brother's widow, of the widow herself,
(brought at birth to a gardener in the dead of night by a mysterious
mulatto,) and of this lady's lovely offspring. My own feelings can never
be harrowed on behalf of a widow with a marriageable daughter, but I am
aware that habitual readers of romance, like ostriches, will swallow
anything. I was hurried to a subterranean chamber where the Seven
Children, in still more elaborate garments, performed various dark
deeds, smoked expensive Havanas, and seated on silken cushions, partook
(like Freemasons) of a succulent cold collation.

The sun shone down with comfortable warmth, and I stretched my legs. My
pipe was out and I refilled it. A meditative snail crawled up and
observed me with flattering interest.

I grew somewhat confused. A stolen will was of course inevitable, and so
were prison dungeons; but the characters had an irritating trick of
revealing at critical moments that they were long-lost relatives. It
must have been a tedious age when poor relations were never safely
buried. However, youth and beauty were at last triumphant and villainy
confounded, virtue was crowned with orange blossom and vice died a
miserable death. Rejoicing in duty performed I went to sleep.

XXX

[Sidenote: Wind and Storm]

But next morning the sky was dark with clouds; people looked up
dubiously when I asked the way and distance to Marchena, prophesying
rain. Fetching my horse, the owner of the stable robbed me with peculiar
callousness, for he had bound my hands the day before, when I went to
see how Aguador was treated, by giving me with most courteous ceremony a
glass of _aguardiente_; and his urbanity was then so captivating that
now I lacked assurance to protest. I paid the scandalous overcharge with
a good grace, finding some solace in the reflection that he was at least
a picturesque blackguard, tall and spare, grey-headed, with fine
features sharpened by age to the strongest lines; for I am always
grateful