"Gently!" interposed his comrade. "You are going the wrong way to work. My friend, Sir"—he addressed Fuentes, who looked up with a mild surprise—"my friend, Sir, was about to suggest that the light is poor for reading."
"Oh," answered Fuentes, smiling easily, "for a minute or two—until they bring my wine. Moreover, I wear excellent glasses."
"But the place is not too well chosen."
Fuentes appeared to digest this for a moment, then turned around upon me with a puzzled air.
"My good Pedro, you have not misled me, I hope? I am short-sighted, gentlemen; and if we have strayed into a private garden I offer you my profoundest apologies." He gathered his manuscript into a roll and stood up.
"To be plain with you, Sir," said the dark man sullenly, "this is not precisely a private garden, and yet we desire privacy."
"Oho?" After a glance around, Fuentes fixed his eyes on the bundle lying on the table. "And at the point of the sword—eh?"
The two young men started and at once began to eye each other suspiciously.
"No, no," Fuentes assured them, smiling; "this is no trap, believe me, but a chance encounter; and I am no alguacil in disguise, but a poor scholar returning to Salamanca for his doctorate. Nor do I seek to know the cause of your quarrel. But here comes the wine!" He waited until the tapster had set flask and glasses on the table and withdrawn. "In the interval before your friends arrive you will not grudge me, Sirs, the draining of a glass to remembrance in a garden where I too have loved my friends, and quarrelled with them, in days gone by—days older now than I care to reckon." He raised the wine and held it up for a moment against the sunset. "Youth—youth!" he sighed.