When all was ready Manuel took leave of the household; Tio Polo held his stirrup while he mounted, adjusted the girths and saddle, and cheered him off in military style; then turning to Dolores, who stood admiring her cavalier as he trotted off, “Ah Dolorocita,” exclaimed he, with a nod and a wink, “_es muy guapo Manuelito in su Xaqueta_,” (Ah Dolores, Manuel is mighty fine in his jacket.) The little damsel blushed and laughed, and ran into the house. Days elapsed without tidings from Manuel, though he had promised to write. The heart of Dolores began to misgive her. Had anything happened to him on the road? Had he failed in his examination? A circumstance occurred in her little household to add to her uneasiness and fill her mind with foreboding. It was almost equal to the escapado of her pigeon. Her tortoise-shell cat eloped at night and clambered to the tiled roof of the Alhambra. In the dead of the night there was a fearful caterwauling; some grimalkin was uncivil to her; then there was a scramble; then a clapper-clawing; then both parties rolled off the roof and tumbled from a great height among the trees on the hill-side. Nothing more was seen or heard of the fugitive, and poor Dolores considered it but the prelude to greater calamities. At the end of ten days, however, Manuel returned in triumph, duly authorized to kill or cure; and all Dolores’ cares were over. There was a general gathering in the evening of the humble friends and hangers-on of Dame Antonio to congratulate her and to pay their respects to _el Señor Medico_, who, peradventure, at some future day, might have all their lives in his hands. One of the most important of these guests was old Tio Polo; and I gladly seized the occasion to prosecute my acquaintance with him. “Oh Señor,” cried Dolores, “you who are so eager to learn all the old histories of the Alhambra, Tio Polo knows more about them than any one else about the place. More than Mateo Ximenes and his whole family put together.” _Vaya_--_Vaya_--Tio Polo, tell the Señor all those stories you told us one evening, about enchanted Moors, and the haunted bridge over the Darro, and the old stone pomegranates, that have been there since the days of King Chico. It was some time before the old invalid could be brought into a narrative vein. He shook his head--they were all idle tales; not worthy of being told to a cavallero like myself. It was only by telling some stories of the kind myself I at last got him to open his budget. It was a whimsical farrago, partly made up of what he had heard in the Alhambra, partly of what he had read in Padre Feyjoo. I will endeavor to give the reader the substance of it, but I will not promise to give it in the very words of Tio Polo. THE LEGEND OF THE ENCHANTED SOLDIER