With these words, Ramon disengaged from one of the four dozen of brass bell buttons, with which his jacket was adorned, one of the many consecrated copper medals that hung thereat, and placed it in Quentin's hand, just as they entered the ill-fated puebla (village), which was totally roofless and ruined. Fragments of charred furniture, broken crocks, cans, and plates strewed the now untrodden street, where the grass was springing. The broad-leaved vines grew wild about the crumbling walls and open windows; and a rude cross here and there marked the hastily made graves of the slaughtered villagers. There, as elsewhere, the wings of the Imperial Eagle, like those of a destroying angel, had spread desolation and death! "When," asked the poor Portuguese, in one of their manifestoes after the horrors of Coimbra, "did the laws of man authorize the outrage of women, the slaughter of aged and other defenceless inhabitants of places which made no resistance; the assassination of men who were accounted rich, only because they could not furnish that quantity of treasure of which it was said they were possessed!" Halting by the old village well, the muleteers attended first to the wants of Madrina and her sleek companions. "_Arre, arre_, old woman," said Ramon, "thou shalt have a deep cool draught at last; _arre, arre_!" This is an old Moorish term (literally gee-up), whence the muleteers are familiarly termed arrieros. They then shared with Quentin their dried fish and hard biscuits, with a few olives and luscious oranges, that had become golden among the groves that cast their shadows on the Ebro; and they frequently patted him on the shoulder, and expressed regret for their suspicions, and the mischief these might have led to. The group around this lonely well, which bubbled through a grotesque stone face, under an old Roman arch, and the scene around, were wonderfully striking and picturesque. In the immediate foreground were the swarthy Castilian muleteers in their gaudy dress, and their gaily trapped mules, all resting on the bright green sward; close by was the ruined puebla; northward rose Castello de Vide in the distance on its verdant hill, the round towers of its ancient fortress and ruined walls, that had more than once withstood the tide of Moorish and Castilian chivalry; to the east and south rose the great sierras that form the boundary between Spain and Portugal, all crimsoned with the light of the gorgeous sun that was setting in gold and saffron behind the cork tree groves that clothe the hills of St. Mames. The frugal repast was barely over when the tinkle of a clear and silvery bell that rung in some solitary hermitage, concealed afar off among the chestnut woods in some hollow of the mountains, came at intervals on the evening wind. "Vespers," said Ramon Campillo, taking off his sombrero; "amigos mios, to prayers."