arms were bare, and round her head she wore a gold band keeping back her black hair, which fell unbound on her back. Before her, on his knees on the cloak, was an old man with a face brown and wrinkled as a walnut, and beard white as thistle-down. With one of his hands he was holding the girl's arm, and with the other offering her a glass of wine. All this I saw at one glance, and then all of them together turned their eyes up at the crack as if they knew that someone was watching them. I started back in alarm, and fell with a crash to the ground. Then I heard loud screams of laughter, but I dared not attempt to look in on them again, I took my rugs to the farther side of the room, and sat down to wait for morning. The talking and laughter continued for about two hours, then it gradually died away, the light faded from the chinks, and all was dark and silent. No person came out; and at last, overcome with drowsiness, I fell asleep. It was day when I woke. I rose and walked round the hovel, and, finding a crack in the wall, I peered into the hag's room. It looked just as I had seen it the day before; there was the pot and pile of ashes, and in the corner the brutish woman lying asleep in her skins. After that I got on to my horse and rode away. May I never again have such an experience as I had that night.” Something was then said about witchcraft by the others, all looking very solemn. “You were very hungry and tired that night,” I ventured to remark, “and perhaps after the woman locked her door you went to sleep and dreamed all that about people eating fruit and playing on the guitar.” “Our horses were tired and we were flying for our lives yesterday,” returned Blas contemptuously. “Perhaps it made us dream that we caught five dun horses to carry us.” “When a person is incredulous, it is useless arguing with him,” said Mariano, a small dark grey-haired man. “I will now tell you a strange adventure I had when I was a young man; but remember I do not put a blunderbuss to any man's breast to compel him to believe me. For what is, is; and let him that disbelieves shake his head till he shakes it off, and it falls to the ground like a cocoanut from the tree.