what is your name, or whither you are going: I only
warn you, that if it suits your convenience to lie on this journey, you
should lie with more appearance of truth. You say you are going to La
Pena de Francia, and you leave it on the right hand more than thirty
leagues behind this place. You travel by night for sake of speed, and
you quit the high road, and strike into thickets and woods where there
is scarcely a footpath. Get up, friend, learn to lie better, and go your
ways, in God's name. But in return for this good advice I give you, will
you not tell me one truth? I know you will, you are such a bad hand at
lying. Tell me, are you not one I have often seen in the capital,
something between a page and a gentleman? One who has the reputation of
being a great poet, and who wrote a romance and a sonnet upon a
gitanilla who some time ago went about Madrid, and was celebrated for
her surpassing beauty? Tell me, and I promise you, on the honour of a
gentleman gipsy, to keep secret whatever you may wish to be so kept.
Mind you, no denial that you are the person I say will go down with me;
for the face I see before me is unquestionably the same I saw in Madrid.
The fame of your talents made me often stop to gaze at you as a
distinguished man, and therefore your features are so strongly impressed
on my memory, though your dress is very different from that in which I
formerly saw you. Don't be alarmed, cheer up, and don't suppose you have
fallen in with a tribe of robbers, but with an asylum, where you may be
guarded and defended from all the world. A thought strikes me; and if
it be as I conjecture, you have been lucky in meeting me above all men.
What I conjecture is, that being in love with Preciosa--that beautiful
young gipsy, to whom you addressed the verses--you have come in search
of her; for which I don't think a bit the worse of you, but quite the
reverse: for gipsy though I am, experience has shown me how far the
potent force of love reaches, and the transformations it makes those
undergo whom it brings beneath its sway and jurisdiction. If this be so,
as I verily believe it is, the fair gitanilla is here."

"Yes, she is here; I saw her last night," said the stranger. This was
like a death-blow to Andrew; for it seemed at once to confirm all his
suspicions.

"I saw her last night," the young man repeated; "but I did not venture
to tell her who I was, for it did not suit my purpose."

"So, then," said Andrew, "yo