you pleased out of them by a little terror.
My scouts managed this very well.

"'He is coming,' they would say, 'after to-morrow.'

"'_Madre de Dios!_'

"'I hope he won't burn the village.'

"'_Questos infernales Ingleses!_ how wicked they are.'

"'You'd better try what a sack of moidores or doubloons might do with him;
he may refuse them, but make the effort.'

"Ha!" said the major, with a long-drawn sigh, "those were pleasant times;
alas, that they should ever come to an end! Well, among the old hidalgos I
met there was one Don Emanuel Selvio de Tormes, an awful old miser, rich as
Croesus, and suspicious as the arch-fiend himself. Lord, how I melted him
down! I quartered two squadrons of horse and a troop of flying artillery
upon him. How the fellows did eat! Such a consumption of wines was never
heard of; and as they began to slacken a little, I took care to replace
them by fresh arrivals,--fellows from the mountains, _cacadores_ they call
them. At last, my friend Don Emanuel could stand it no longer, and he sent
me a diplomatic envoy to negotiate terms, which, upon the whole, I must
say, were fair enough; and in a few days after, the _cacadores_ were
withdrawn, and I took up my quarters at the chateau. I have had various
chances and changes in this wicked world, but I am free to confess that I
never passed a more agreeable time than the seven weeks I spent there. Don
Emanuel, when properly managed, became a very pleasant little fellow; Donna
Maria, his wife, was a sweet creature. You need not be winking that way.
Upon my life she was: rather fat, to be sure, and her age something verging
upon the fifties; but she had such eyes, black as sloes, and luscious as
ripe grapes; and she was always smiling and ogling, and looking so sweet.
Confound me, if I think she wasn't the most enchanting being in this world,
with about ten thousand pounds' worth of jewels upon her fingers and in
her ears. I have her before me at this instant, as she used to sit in the
little arbor in the garden, with a Manilla cigar in her mouth, and a little
brandy-and-water--quite weak, you know--beside her.

"'Ah, General,' she used to say--she always called me general--'what a
glorious career yours is! A soldier is _indeed_ a man.'

"Then she would look at poor Emanuel, who used to sit in a corner, holding
his hand to his face, for hours, calculating interest and cent per cent,
till he fell asleep.

"Now, he labored under a very singular