The señora received me with a sort of goodnatured dignity, and bade me sit on a low seat hard by. She then began to inspect me, as I thought, as curiously as though I had been some sort of strange animal, muttering to herself, and sometimes whispering her daughter; to my no small embarrassment; all at once, she said— ‘Young man, I fear me you are a heretic?’ I replied softly that I was of the religion of my fathers. ‘But you are a pirate,’ she commenced again; ‘and you put our people to death very cruelly, and you pillage our ships. See, what being a heretic leads you to. Perhaps it was very weak in me to save you, and I know not what father Anselmo will say when next I go to confession.’ I answered that, far away in Scotland I had a mother, who I was sure would do for any poor hunted Spaniard what she had done for me, and that, though we did not worship in the same fashion, yet that never would my mother forget in her prayers the kind heart that had saved her son.’ I spoke this very earnestly, for I felt what I said deeply, and kneeling down, I took the señora’s hand again, and kissed it. She paused a little time, and then asked, what made my countrymen and the French so vengeful against the Spaniards. Now, this was an argument which I had no will to enter into—seeing that such a debate could but breed angry feelings on both sides; and so I endeavoured to turn the matter off by saying, that it was the two nations, and not individuals, who made war—on account of the heritage of the new world. ‘But, señor,’ said Joseffa, and all my nerves tingled as I heard her voice, ‘you are of a very cruel and vindictive nation; for when my poor father’s great bark, the Trinidada, was taken, all the sailors were struck down and murdered upon the deck.’ To this I answered, that I understood that the Trinidada had been captured by Louis Montbars, a Frenchman; that I had myself been prisoner in the hands of that captain; and that it was only by a dangerous flight that I escaped being sold into slavery by him in the isle of Tortugas. This revelation all at once seemed to alter the position in which I stood in the favour of the ladies, who, up to that time, although they had, as I understood, received a good report—but from whence I could not guess—of my conduct before the alcaide—were yet partly prepossessed against me, as a heretic and a pirate of that class which had brought so much desolation on their house. So, presently, they desired to hear somewhat of my adventures, which I told them very faithfully—the narration occupying the greatest portion of the day. While I sat speaking, my eyes often encountered the dark orbs of Joseffa fixed on mine. Then would we both drop our glances to the ground, and my voice, despite myself, would falter, and a red blush would spring over the bright olive cheeks of the young Spanish lady, and her feather-fan would flutter more violently than before.