e
with a better grace. But since you take the thing so well, it matters
not. To me, indeed, it seems discourteous. But you will find yourself
the gainer. The family will not much tempt you. A mother, a son, and a
daughter; an old woman said to be half-witted, a country lout, and a
country girl, who stands very high with her confessor, and is,
therefore," chuckled the physician, "most likely plain; there is not much
in that to attract the fancy of a dashing officer."

"And yet you say they are high-born," I objected.

"Well, as to that, I should distinguish," returned the doctor. "The
mother is; not so the children. The mother was the last representative
of a princely stock, degenerate both in parts and fortune. Her father
was not only poor, he was mad: and the girl ran wild about the
residencia till his death. Then, much of the fortune having died with
him, and the family being quite extinct, the girl ran wilder than ever,
until at last she married, Heaven knows whom, a muleteer some say,
others a smuggler; while there are some who uphold there was no marriage
at all, and that Felipe and Olalla are bastards. The union, such as it
was, was tragically dissolved some years ago; but they live in such
seclusion, and the country at that time was in so much disorder, that
the precise manner of the man's end is known only to the priest--if even
to him."

"I begin to think I shall have strange experiences," said I.

"I would not romance, if I were you," replied the doctor; "you will
find, I fear, a very grovelling and commonplace reality. Felipe, for
instance, I have seen. And what am I to say? He is very rustic, very
cunning, very loutish, and, I should say, an innocent; the others are
probably to match. No, no, senor commandante, you must seek congenial
society among the great sights of our mountains; and in these at least,
if you are at all a lover of the works of nature, I promise you will not
be disappointed."

The next day Felipe came for me in a rough country cart, drawn by a
mule; and a little before the stroke of noon, after I had said farewell
to the doctor, the innkeeper, and different good souls who had
befriended me during my sickness, we set forth out of the city by the
eastern gate, and began to ascend into the Sierra. I had been so long a
prisoner, since I was left behind for dying after the loss of the
convoy, that the mere smell of the earth set me smiling. The country
through which we went was wild and r