e _modus operandi_, infallible marks that
fathered it on the Spaniard. The quiet, stealthy manner, the place,
just on the border, yet out of Spain. "Besides," he urged, "you
yourself say, that the few words the marauders were heard to utter
were all Spanish."

"But the same testimony proves them to have been bad Spanish, even to
the ears of a Portuguese borderer, and evidently used by foreigners
for the purpose of disguise, like the dresses they wore. Who ever
heard of a Spaniard breaking a man's head, when he could give him the
blade of his knife? The farmer's bloody crown was a plain piece of
English handicraft. Spaniards would have rummaged the house for _la
plata_, and have snatched the earrings from the women's ears; the
robbers, a more thirsty race, thought chiefly of carrying off the
liquor."

The number and loud voices of those opposed to him only made L'Isle
more stubborn in maintaining his views. He seemed rather to like being
in a minority of one. On the other hand, Lord Strathern construed his
remarks into an undisguised censure of his lax discipline. Luckily he
was a truly hospitable man: nowhere, but at his own board, could he
have kept his temper under control. Between the fumes of wine and
smoke of cigars, the matter only became more and more cloudy. It was
late when L'Isle left the table and entered the drawing-room, with a
brow still ruffled by the controversy.

Striving to resume his equanimity, he took a seat by Lady Mabel. But
she, by no means pleased at the long absence of her interpreter, and
his late neglect in attending on her, pushed her chair back, and said
something about "falling into bad habits."

"Do you think so?" said L'Isle, looking surprised, then reflecting a
moment. "Why, Lady Mabel, I am not aware of having committed any
excess, at least of the kind you suspect."

"Why, then, do you come from below so much heated and excited?"

"I have been engaged in a hot argument with my Lord, and others."

"Coolness would be more appropriate to argument than heat. But this
was plainly an after-dinner discussion. The subject should be handled
a second time, in imitation of those wise barbarians, who resolved on
nothing until they had twice taken counsel, once of their cups, and
then of cool sobriety the morning after."

"I feel no need of appealing to the cool reflecting morning hours."

"Of course you do not feel it now; that, too, will come with the sober
morning."

L'Isle, a good