ng across a succession of hills, the off-shoots of Serra d'Ossa.

"Traveling in this country," said Lady Mabel, as she paused with
L'Isle, to let the rest of the party come up, "is like sailing over
rough waters, a perpetual up and down, neither speedy nor safe."

"Few countries exhibit a greater variety of surface than Portugal,"
said L'Isle; "it may be likened to the ocean the day after a storm,
when a change of wind has intersected the mountain billows with every
variety of little waves. The language, accordingly, is rich in terms
expressive of these variations of surface. It has _Monte_, a mountain;
_Montezhino_, a little mountain; _Outeiro_, a hill; _Outeirinho_, a
hillock; _Serra_, a lofty mountain, with various inequalities of
surface; _Serrania_, a cluster of mountains; _Penha_, a rocky
precipice. So that you can hardly be at a loss for a word to express
the character of any elevation. Meanwhile, let us hasten up this
_Montezhino_, for both the sun and our night's quarters are on the
other side of it, and the former will not wait for us there."

They presently caught sight of what seemed at first to be a very tall
woman; but they soon perceived that it was a friar, who, with the hood
of his black cloak thrown back on his shoulders, and the skirts of his
dingy grey frock girded up under St. Francis' cord, was making such
good time on his up-hill path, that they overtook him with difficulty
at the top of the hill. He grasped in his hand what had a marvelous
resemblance to the _cajado_, a seven-foot staff, pointed at one end,
and with a heavy knob at the other, with which the Portuguese peasant
always goes armed; and a formidable weapon it is in his skillful
hands. The shortened skirt of the friar exposed a pair of muscular
calves, that bore him well over the mountain road.

He turned to look at them as they drew near, and they saw that he was
a young man, not much over twenty, tall and strong, and remarkably
well made and good-looking.

Old Moodie cast a sinister look on him, and longed to strip him of his
frock, and put him between the stilts of a plough.

"This is a noble specimen," the commissary remarked, "of that useless
army the country maintains at free quarters. His ration would more
than feed one English or two Portuguese soldiers for its defence."

"I would like to turn him loose on a Frenchman," said L'Isle, "armed,
like himself, only with the _cajado_. What a recruit Beresford lost
when this you