harmingly unkempt walled garden with a stone fountain in the
middle whose features were all rounded by time and blurred with moss,
with tall ragged bananas and taller wind-swept palms, and a creeping
lush tangle of old plants, and the damp soft greenness of moss and the
elfin tinkling of little waters. On our balcony the sun shone strong; so
that we could warm our chilled bones gratefully like lizards against a
wall.

We tried all the restaurants, one after the other, and found them about
equally bad. We also went in--once--for a real Spanish dinner. It
consisted of a succession of dishes highly seasoned with the hottest
sort of pepper, generally drowned in rich gravy, and composed of such
things as cheese, chunks of meat, corn meal, and the like. Any one of
these dishes would have been a fine strength test for the average
unsophisticated stomach; but your true Spanish dinner consists of a
dozen of them. We had horrible indigestion.

In one place, kept by a German, we were treated very disagreeably, and
overcharged so badly that Yank vowed he intended to get even. As to just
how he was going to do it, he maintained a deep silence; but he advised
us he would eat there the following evening. Also he asked four or five
other men, with whom we had become friendly, to meet us at the
restaurant. We met, ate our meal leisurely, and had a very good time.

"Now," said Yank to us, "when we get up, you fellows all go right out
the front door and keep going until you get to the Fonda bar, and there
you wait for me. No lingering, now. Do as you are told."

We did as we were told. After about fifteen or twenty minutes Yank
sauntered in.

"Now," said Johnny, "I hope you'll explain. We're much obliged for your
dinner party, but we want to know what it is all about."

"Well," chuckled Yank, "I just dealt the Dutchman what you might call
idle persiflage until you fellows had been gone a few minutes, and then
I held him out my dollar. 'What's that?' says he. 'That's a dollar,'
says I, 'to pay for my dinner.' 'How about all those other fellows?'
says he. 'I got nothing to do with them,' says I. 'They can pay for
their own dinners,' and after a while I come away. He was having some
sort of Dutch fit, and I got tired of watching him."

Outside the walls of the city was a large encampment of tents in which
dwelt the more impecunious or more economical of the miners. Here too
had been located a large hospital tent. There was a great dea