At the mean wine-shop of that hamlet Mr. Butler inquired his way by the simple expedient of shouting “Tavora?” with a strong interrogative inflection. The vintner made it plain by gestures--accompanied by a rattling musketry of incomprehensible speech that their way lay straight ahead. And straight ahead they went, following that mule track for some five or six miles until it began to slope gently towards the plain again. Below them they presently beheld a cluster of twinkling lights to advertise a township. They dropped swiftly down, and in the outskirts overtook a belated bullock-cart, whose ungreased axle was arousing the hillside echoes with its plangent wail. Of the vigorous young woman who marched barefoot beside it, shouldering her goad as if it were a pikestaff, Mr. Butler inquired--by his usual method--if this were Tavora, to receive an answer which, though voluble, was unmistakably affirmative. “Covento Dominicano?” was his next inquiry, made after they had gone some little way. The woman pointed with her goad to a massive, dark building, flanked by a little church, which stood just across the square they were entering. A moment later the sergeant, by Mr. Butler’s orders, was knocking upon the iron-studded main door. They waited awhile in vain. None came to answer the knock; no light showed anywhere upon the dark face of the convent. The sergeant knocked again, more vigorously than before. Presently came timid, shuffling steps; a shutter opened in the door, and the grille thus disclosed was pierced by a shaft of feeble yellow light. A quavering, aged voice demanded to know who knocked. “English soldiers,” answered the lieutenant in Portuguese. “Open!” A faint exclamation suggestive of dismay was the answer, the shutter closed again with a snap, the shuffling steps retreated and unbroken silence followed. “Now wharra devil may this mean?” growled Mr. Butler. Drugged wits, like stupid ones, are readily suspicious. “Wharra they hatching in here that they are afraid of lerring Bri’ish soldiers see? Knock again, Flanagan. Louder, man!” The sergeant beat the door with the butt of his carbine. The blows gave out a hollow echo, but evoked no more answer than if they had fallen upon the door of a mausoleum. Mr. Butler completely lost his temper. “Seems to me that we’ve stumbled upon a hotbed o’ treason. Hotbed o’ treason!” he repeated, as if pleased with the phrase. “That’s wharrit is.” And he added peremptorily: “Break down the door.” “But, sir,” began the sergeant in protest, greatly daring. “Break down the door,” repeated Mr. Butler. “Lerrus be after seeing wha’ these monks are afraid of showing us. I’ve a notion they’re hiding more’n their wine.”