h hangs around my neck, and pressing it to my
lips, present it for the adoration of the idolater, and give him his
alternative; that which Gayferos and the Cid, my ancestors, offered
the Soldan and the Moor--baptism or death! He hesitates; perhaps
smiles scornfully upon my little band; I answer him by deeds, as Don
Ferdinando, my illustrious grandfather, answered Atahuallpa at Peru, in
sight of all his court and camp."

"With your lance-point, as Gayferos did the Soldan?" asked Amyas,
amused.

"No, sir; persuasion first, for the salvation of a soul is at stake. Not
with the lance-point, but the spur, sir, thus!"--

And striking his heels into his horse's flanks, he darted off at full
speed.

"The Spanish traitor!" shouted Yeo. "He's going to escape! Shall we
shoot, sir? Shall we shoot?"

"For Heaven's sake, no!" said Amyas, looking somewhat blank,
nevertheless, for he much doubted whether the whole was not a ruse on
the part of the Spaniard, and he knew how impossible it was for his
fifteen stone of flesh to give chase to the Spaniard's twelve. But he
was soon reassured; the Spaniard wheeled round towards him, and began to
put the rough hackney through all the paces of the manege with a grace
and skill which won applause from the beholders.

"Thus!" he shouted, waving his hand to Amyas, between his curvets and
caracoles, "did my illustrious grandfather exhibit to the Paynim emperor
the prowess of a Castilian cavalier! Thus!--and thus!--and thus, at
last, he dashed up to his very feet, as I to yours, and bespattering
that unbaptized visage with his Christian bridle foam, pulled up his
charger on his haunches, thus!"

And (as was to be expected from a blown Irish garron on a peaty Irish
hill-side) down went the hapless hackney on his tail, away went his
heels a yard in front of him, and ere Don Guzman could "avoid his
selle," horse and man rolled over into neighboring bog-hole.

"After pride comes a fall," quoth Yeo with unmoved visage, as he lugged
him out.

"And what would you do with the emperor at last?" asked Amyas when the
Don had been scrubbed somewhat clean with a bunch of rushes. "Kill him,
as your grandfather did Atahuallpa?"

"My grandfather," answered the Spaniard, indignantly, "was one of those
who, to their eternal honor, protested to the last against that most
cruel and unknightly massacre. He could be terrible to the heathen; but
he kept his plighted word, sir, and taught me to keep mine, as y