_What would you have? In la Verdura All the day long she keeps a stall: Students, bachelors buy her nosegays, Given with a look and--well, that's all! Go, silly boy, believe you first with her-- Twenty at once she'll entertain. Why love a mistress and be curst with her? Copy Luisa--love all Spain!_ He paused, still eyeing them. "You recognise the tune, Sirs? Does she play it yet? Well, then, I made it for her." "_You?_ How came _you_ to make her that tune?" The younger man had found his voice at length. "No, Sir; coquette she may be, but that she ever was friends with such a one as Andrea Galazza I will not yet believe." "And you are right. Sirs, you have not yet told me your names: but in your generous heat you have given me your secret--that you are two lovers of Spain, and even such a pair as my friend and I have travelled some distance to seek. In return you shall have mine. I tricked you just now. I am not Don Andrea, but his brother Eugenio--or, as some call him, Fuentes." "Fuentes! _You!_" "Upon my honour, yes." He pulled off his spectacles, meeting their incredulity with a frank laugh. "What proof can I give you?" The guitar still lay across his knees: he picked it up as if to play, but set it down after a moment with another laugh, hard and bitter. "Let us go together, gentlemen, to the Street of the Virgins, and ask Luisa if she remembers me." It was agreed that the young men--who gave their names as Diego de Ribalta and Sebastian Paz--should not accompany us into the city, but wend their way back across the bridge, while we finished our wine and mounted our beasts at leisure. The officer at the bridge-end made no pother about our passports (borrowed, I need scarcely say, from the estimable Don Andrea, who, as his brother explained, was a careful man, and zealous in all dealings with the authorities); and by-and-by we were clattering up-hill through the ill-lighted streets of Salamanca. At the head of the first street our two friends stepped out of the shadow and joined us in silence. In silence, too, Fuentes regreeted them, and led the way--to an inn first, the Four Crowns, standing almost under the shadow of the Old Cathedral, where we stabled mare and mule; then, on foot, through a maze of zigzagging lanes and alleys, back into the depths of a waterside quarter. Once he was at fault--the lane we followed ending abruptly in an open space strewn with rubble-heaps, a broad area where the French had lately been at work. Among these heaps he blundered for a while in the darkness, and then, retracing his steps, took up the scent again and led us down one narrow street, across another; turned to the right, counting the houses as he went, and knocked at the twelfth door without hesitation. The knock was a peculiar one--five quick taps, followed, after a pause, by one distinct and heavy.