The disposition of Major Flinders, as the reader knows, was the reverse of enterprising--he wouldn't have given a straw to be concerned in the finest adventure that ever happened in romance. He paused with one stocking on, inclined, like the little woman whose garments had been curtailed by the licentious shears of the pedlar, to doubt his own identity, and wondering if it could be really he, John Flinders, to whom such a proposition was broached, requiring him to assist in invading the peace of a family. As soon as he recovered his powers of speech, of which astonishment had for a moment deprived him, he began earnestly to dissuade the Ensign from the enterprise; but Owen knew his man too well, and had too much youthful vivacity of will to allow much time for remonstrance. "Look you, Major," said he, "I'm positive I can't live without Juana. I'll make a bold stroke for a wife. The thing's settled--no going back now for me; and I shall go through with it with or without you. But you're not the man, I'm sure, to desert a fellow in extremity, at a time, too, when the advantages of your experience and coolness are so peculiarly needed. 'Call you that backing of your friends?'" The compliment, or the quotation, or both, softened the Major. "'Would it were night, Hal, and all well,'" said he, half mechanically following the Falstaffian train of ideas Owen had artfully conjured up, and at the same time drawing on the breeches which that astute youth obsequiously handed to him. It was still dark when they issued forth into the narrow and dingy streets of Tarifa. My grandfather, totally unaccustomed to visit the glimpses of the moon in this adventurous fashion, was full of strange fears--heard as many imaginary suspicious noises and voices as Bunyan's Pilgrim in the dark valley--and once or twice stopt abruptly and grasped Owen's arm, while he pointed to a spy dogging them in the distant gloom, who turned out to be a door-post. But Owen was now in his element; no tom-cat in Tarifa was more familiar with housetops and balconies at the witching hour than he, and he stepped gaily on. Presently they were challenged by a sentry, to whom Owen promptly advanced and slipped into his itching palm a doubloon, when the trustworthy warrior immediately turned upon his heel, and, walking to the extremity of his post, looked with great vigilance in the opposite direction.