"It is not I, it is the uniform," Terence said. "They obey me when they won't obey their own officers, because I am on the English general's staff. They know that we have thrashed the French, and that their own officers know nothing at all about fighting, and they have no respect whatever for them. More than that, they despise them because they know that they are always intriguing, and that really, although they may be called generals, they are but politicians. You will see, when they get English officers to discipline them, they will turn out capital soldiers; but they think so little of their own, that if anything goes wrong their first idea is that their officers must be traitors, and so fall upon them and murder them. "You look older than I do, Mary. You seem to me quite a woman, while, in spite of my uniform and my command, and all that, I am really only a boy." "I suppose I am almost a woman, Terence, but I don't feel so. You see out here girls often marry at sixteen. I know father said once that he hoped I shouldn't marry until I was eighteen, and that he wanted to keep me young. I never thought about getting almost a woman until the bishop told me one day that if I chose to marry a señor that he would choose for me, he would get me absolution from my vows, and that I need not then resign my property." "The old blackguard!" Terence exclaimed, angrily. "And what did you say to him?" "I said that, in the first place, I had never thought of marrying; that in the second place, I had not taken any vows; and in the third place that when I did marry I would choose for myself. He got into a terrible rage, and said that I was an obstinate heretic, and that some day when I was tired of my prison I would think better of it." "I would have hit the bishop hard if I had known about that," Terence grumbled. "If ever I fall in with him again I will pay him out for it. Well, anyhow, I may as well take off his ring; it might lead to awkward questions if anyone noticed it." "I think that you had certainly better do so, Terence; it might cost you your life. The bishop is a bad man, and he is a very dangerous enemy. If he heard that an English officer was wearing an episcopal ring, and upon inquiring found that that officer had been in Oporto at its capture, he would know at once that it was you who assaulted him, and he would never rest until he had your life. You had better throw it away." "All right, here goes!" Terence said, carelessly, and he threw the ring into a clump of bushes. "Now, Mary, it is getting dark, and I should think supper must be waiting for us." "Yes, it is late; we have been a long while, indeed," the girl said, getting up hastily. "I forgot all about time." "We are in plenty of time," Terence said, looking at his watch. "As we all had some cold meat for lunch as soon as we arrived, I ordered dinner at six o'clock, and it wants twenty minutes of that time now."