"Ha, ha, ha! Bravo Padre Trevino!" chorussed all the laughing listeners, as they clattered away with their musket-butts in applause of his atrocious narrative. "Thou wert revived, no doubt?" said Baltasar, impatiently. "_Amiga mio_, I should think so; it brightened my intellects; it gave me new ideas--I drew inspiration from that beloved borrachio skin. I cast away my ample wig, drew from my wallet shaving apparatus, and in a trice I was shaven to the eyes, as you see me. Abandoning my cloak, I concealed my dagger in my left sleeve, took a wine skin under my arm, and walking deliberately to the officer in command of the guard at the south gate, offered the wine for sale at half its value, seeming to all appearance a very quiet citizen, anxious in these hard times to do a little business, even with the enemy. He took the skin from me, bid me go to the devil for payment; the sentinel opened the wicket, and I was thrust out of Valencia--the very thing I wanted. I said nothing about my poor wife or starving little ones, lest their hearts might relent, but turned my face to the mountains, and I am here." This savage story met, we have said, with great applause, and Quentin, after the scene he had witnessed in the street of the puebla, felt no surprise that it did so; but his horror of the Padre was great, and he felt his repugnance for the guerillas increase every moment. Policy and necessity forced him to dissemble; yet, in that mountain village there seemed such an atmosphere of blood, dishonourable warfare, and patriotism gone mad, that he longed intensely to be out of it, and once again in the more congenial and civilized society he had left. "Supper, senor," said Don Baltasar, rising from the table and gathering up his papers; "let us rest now, for you must be weary, and in truth so am I; and then to bed, for the hour is late, and we have both work to do upon the morrow. Trevino, who has the quarter-guard?" "El Conde de Maciera, senor," replied the Padre. "Good--not a bat will stir between this and Valencia without his hearing of it. This way, then," added Baltasar, ushering them into an inner apartment, where a very different face from any Quentin had yet seen in the Peninsula shed a light upon the scene. CHAPTER XXIV. DONNA ISIDORA. "She sung of love--while o'er her lyre The rosy rays of evening fell, As if to feed with their soft fire The soul within that trembling shell. The same rich light hung o'er her cheek, And played around those lips that sung, And spoke as flowers would sing and speak, If love could lend their leaves a tongue." MOORE.