ers--he who
had demanded our papers on the Plaza--looked viciously at Barbarossa,
who assumed a most artistic pretence of stolidity.

"Come here, senor, and you will have a better vision of your friends,"
he said with mock suavity.

Barbarossa smiled, thanked him, and walked quietly to the place
indicated, an exposed opening beside the wall.

"I can see nothing," he said.

I adjusted my long-distance glass, and ranged over the wide stretch of
landscape, but could see nothing either. As I shut it up and returned it
to the case, a sergeant advanced from the party of soldiers on the slope
and marched directly towards me. I was puzzled and, I own, a trifle
unnerved.

"Senor," he said to me, "I carry the compliments of my captain, and his
request that you would lend him your glass, as he has forgotten his
own."

"With pleasure," I answered readily, much relieved. "I will take it to
him myself, as it is London-made, and he may not understand how it is
sighted."

This may have been a breach of neutrality, but what was I to do? If I
refused, the glass would have been taken from me, and I should have been
compromised. I handed it to the officer with my best bow, explained its
mechanism to him; he bowed to me, and from that moment I felt that I was
under his wing. I may be wrong, but I have a notion that in a skirmish
it is much better to be near regulars than volunteers, and I stood in a
line with the military a few paces away.

Suddenly there was a spark and a report away down in a field of maize,
some six hundred yards below us, and the whizz of a bullet was heard.

"Steady, men!" said the captain; "don't discharge your rifles."

The sight was very pretty as they stood in a group on the green hillside
in attitude of suspense, their weapons held at the ready, and all eyes
fixed on the front, from which the smoke was rising. It was very like
to the celebrated picture by Protais, familiar in every cabaret in
France, "_Avant le Combat;_" but even more picturesque than that, for
these soldiers were dressed most irregularly--some in tattered capote,
others in shirt-sleeves, some in shako, others in _bonnet de police_. A
few civilians had crept out of the town by this time, and the chief of
the Miqueletes roared peremptorily to have that gate shut. This was not
an agreeable position for Barbarossa and myself. Our retreat was cut
off. We were unarmed. If one of those amateur warriors were killed, we
ran the imminent hazar