r land, to point out some curiosity, more to their taste;
some miraculous image, some saintly relic brought by angels from the
Holy Land, or, perhaps, some local natural phenomenon, which has a
dash of the wonderful about it. For instance, when at Braga, three
years ago, with my hands full of business, and anxious at the same
time to learn all I could of the country around, my Portuguese
companion compelled me to waste a precious hour in visiting a famous
spring in the garden of a convent of St. Augustine. The water, you
must know, is intensely cold, and if a bottle of wine be immersed in
it, it is instantly turned into vinegar."

"Did you see that?" asked Lady Mabel.

"When I called for a bottle of wine, the good fathers told me they had
given all they had to a detachment of Portuguese troops that marched
by the day before--a charity more wondrous than the virtue of the
spring."

"Yet it is a pity you could not test the virtues of this wonderful
spring," said she.

"Not more wonderful," said L'Isle, "than the fountain in the village
of Friexada. Its water, too, is excessively cold, and of so hungry a
nature, that in less than an hour it consumes a joint of meat, leaving
the bones quite bare."

"You of course tested that," said she.

"Unluckily," said L'Isle, "our party had only one leg of mutton in
store, and were too hungry to risk their dinner in the fountain's
maw."

"You are a bad traveler," said Lady Mabel, "and seem never to have
with you the means of testing the truth of what you are told."

"I take with me a good stock of faith," said L'Isle, "and believe, or
seem to believe, all that I am told. This pleases these people
wonderfully well, and keeping them in good humor is the main point
just now. There is, however, near Estremoz, which place you passed
through coming hither, a curiosity of somewhat a similar kind. It is
a spring which is dry in winter, but pours out a considerable stream
in summer. Its waters are of so petrifying a quality, that the wheels
of the mills it works are said to be soon turned into stone."

"I trust, for your credit as a traveler," said Lady Mabel, "that you
will be able to say that you, for once, proved the truth or falsehood
of what you heard."

"I did, and found them incrusted with stone. But that is not so
curious as the prophetic spring of Xido, which foretells to the
rustics around a fruitful season, by pouring forth but little water,
or a year of scarcity by an a