“I have it, sir; I’ve found it out. There’s people living down that small street there; I saw a light this minute as I passed.” I turned immediately, and accompanied by the mule-driver, followed Mike across a little open square into a small and narrow street, at the end of which a light was seen faintly twinkling. We hurried on and in a few minutes reached a high wall of solid masonry, from a niche of which we now discovered, to our utter disappointment, the light proceeded. It was a small lamp placed before a little waxen image of the Virgin, and was probably the last act of piety of some poor villager ere he left his home and hearth forever. There it burned, brightly and tranquilly, throwing its mellow ray upon the cold, deserted stones. Whatever impatience I might have given way to in a moment of chagrin was soon repressed, as I saw my two followers, uncovering their heads in silent reverence, kneel down before the little shrine. There was something at once touching and solemn in this simultaneous feeling of homage from the hearts of those removed in country, language, and in blood. They bent meekly down, their heads bowed upon their bosoms, while with muttering voices each offered up his prayer. All sense of their disappointment, all memory of their forlorn state, seemed to have yielded to more powerful and absorbing thoughts, as they opened their hearts in prayer. My eyes were still fixed upon them when suddenly Mike, whose devotion seemed of the briefest, sprang to his legs, and with a spirit of levity but little in accordance with his late proceedings, commenced a series of kicking, rapping, and knocking at a small oak postern sufficient to have aroused a whole convent from their cells. “House there! Good people within!”--bang, bang, bang; but the echoes alone responded to his call, and the sounds died away at length in the distant streets, leaving all as silent and dreary as before. Our Portuguese friend, who by this time had finished his orisons, now began a vigorous attack upon the small door, and with the assistance of Mike, armed with a fragment of granite about the size of a man’s head, at length separated the frame from the hinges, and sent the whole mass prostrate before us.