e Spaniard is beneath contempt. He was
almost licked in one battle. He was four months here, and how far did he
get into the interior?"

Mahomet conveniently forgot the defeat of Guad-el-ras, the occupation of
Tetuan, and the indemnity of four hundred millions of reals which was
exacted as the price of peace; but he was literally correct, the
victorious O'Donnell did not flaunt his flag beyond a very exiguous
strip of the territory of Sidi-Muley-Mahomet.

We were walking as we talked, and by this time had reached the brow of a
wooded rise which commanded an uninterrupted prospect of the ocean. The
flowery cistus flourished on the eminence, and cork-trees, chestnuts,
and willows shielded us from the fierceness of the sun. Behind and
around were a succession of richly-planted gardens. We halted, and the
Shereef, scanning the horizon in the direction of the Rock, suddenly put
a question to me which almost took my breath away:

"Do they buy commissions over the way still?"

"No; that system has been abolished."

"It is well," he remarked, with a scarcely suppressed sneer. "It was
incredible that a great nation and a fighting nation should make a
traffic of the command of men, as if a clump of spears were a kintal of
maize," and as he relapsed into silence a soldierly fire gleamed in his
irides, his frame seemed to straighten and swell, and the nature of the
prophet retired before that of the warrior.

From where we stood we could ferret out a house with a veranda in front,
built on a terrace and begirt with trees. That was the residence of His
Highness; but we turned our eyes in another direction, lest we should be
suspected of rude curiosity by this courteous African. I was trying to
divine the tally of years our host had numbered. No Arab knows his own
age, and here it may be useful to tell the reader wherein the
distinction lies between the Moor and the Arab. Virtually they are the
same; but the name of Moor is given to those who dwell in cities, of
Arab to those who roam the plains. Mahomet came to my aid. His Highness
had whiskers when Tangier was bombarded by Prince de Joinville. That was
in August, 1844, a good nine-and-twenty years before, so that
Abd-es-Salam must have long doubled the cape of forty, which would leave
him considerably the senior of his Frankish wife.

We turned at a noise--the creak of a rustic wooden gate on its hinges; a
figure approached. And then it was given to me to gaze upon Her Highn