the simple expedient of shouting "Tavora?" with a strong interrogative
inflection. The vintner made it plain by gestures - accompanied by a
rattling musketry of incomprehensible speech that their way lay
straight ahead. And straight ahead they went, following that mule
track for some five or six miles until it began to slope gently
towards the plain again. Below them they presently beheld a cluster
of twinkling lights to advertise a township. They dropped swiftly
down, and in the outskirts overtook a belated bullock-cart, whose
ungreased axle was arousing the hillside echoes with its plangent
wail.

Of the vigorous young woman who marched barefoot beside it,
shouldering her goad as if it were a pikestaff, Mr. Butler inquired
- by his usual method - if this were Tavora, to receive an answer
which, though voluble, was unmistakably affirmative.

"Covento Dominicano? was his next inquiry, made after they had gone
some little way.

The woman pointed with her goad to a massive, dark building, flanked
by a little church, which stood just across the square they were
entering.

A moment later the sergeant, by Mr. Butler's orders, was knocking
upon the iron-studded main door. They waited awhile in vain. None
came to answer the knock; no light showed anywhere upon the dark
face of the convent. The sergeant knocked again, more vigorously
than before. Presently came timid, shuffling steps; a shutter
opened in the door, and the grille thus disclosed was pierced by
a shaft of feeble yellow light. A quavering, aged voice demanded