villainous
trick. A hundred and ten thousand ducats for the ransom of the town!
After having burned and plundered the one-half--and having made me
dine with them too, ah! and sit between the--the serpent, and his
lieutenant-general--and drunk my health in my own private wine--wine
that I had from Xeres nine years ago, senors and offered, the shameless
heretics, to take me to England, if I would turn Lutheran, and find me a
wife, and make an honest man of me--ah! and then to demand fresh ransom
for the priory and the fort--perfidious!"

"Well," said the colonel, "they had the law of us, the cunning rascals,
for we forgot to mention anything but the town, in the agreement. Who
would have dreamed of such a fetch as that?"

"So I told my good friend the prior, when he came to me to borrow the
thousand crowns. It was Heaven's will. Unexpected like the thunderbolt,
and to be borne as such. Every man must bear his own burden. How could I
lend him aught?"

"Your holiness's money had been all carried off by them before," said
the intendant, who knew, and none better, the exact contrary.

"Just so--all my scanty savings! desolate in my lone old age. Ah,
senors, had we not had warning of the coming of these wretches from
my dear friend the Marquess of Santa Cruz, whom I remember daily in my
prayers, we had been like to them who go down quick into the pit. I too
might have saved a trifle, had I been minded: but in thinking too much
of others, I forgot myself, alas!"

"Warning or none, we had no right to be beaten by such a handful," said
the sea-captain; "and a shame it is, and a shame it will be, for many a
day to come."

"Do you mean to cast any slur, sir, upon the courage and conduct of his
Catholic majesty's soldiers?" asked the colonel.

"I?--No; but we were foully beaten, and that behind our barricades too,
and there's the plain truth."

"Beaten, sir! Do you apply such a term to the fortunes of war? What more
could our governor have done? Had we not the ways filled with poisoned
caltrops, guarded by Indian archers, barred with butts full of earth,
raked with culverins and arquebuses? What familiar spirit had we, sir,
to tell us that these villains would come along the sea-beach, and not
by the high-road, like Christian men?"

"Ah!" said the bishop, "it was by intuition diabolic, I doubt not, that
they took that way. Satanas must need help those who serve him; and for
my part, I can only attribute (I would the capta