"He was betrayed by Don Fabrique, and shot to death by a platoon of infantry, in the Plaza of Cordova. Oh, señor, the saints deliver us from the devil and Don Fabrique!"
"So say I," added Jack, as the landlord left us, and thus, being impressed alike by these communications and that of Donna Paulina, we resolved to change our route and avoid this formidable personage who took such an interest in our proceedings.
To deceive any person who might be watching about the hotel, or be bribed by Fabrique, or the major, we made particular inquiries of the patron, the waiters, and stable-boys concerning the road to Gibraltar by the way of Puerto Serrano; and having, as Jack said, "completely thrown dust in their eyes," we took the route to San Lucar and left Seville at a rapid trot about an hour after noon, pausing only to give a peseta to a poor Franciscan who begged from us at the city gate.
I looked back to Seville as we galloped away.
The tower of La Giralda and all its spires were sinking in the sunny haze and lessening in the distance.
"So ends an intimacy that might have ripened into something better," thought I.
CHAPTER XI.
THE RATERILLO.
Passing Coria del Rio, a little province and partido, after a twenty miles' ride we halted to dine at Lebrija, which is so famed for its oil of olives, and there we got some prime Xeres, which bore the private mark of the señores Gonzalez and Dubose, the famous wine merchants; and now we enjoyed the hope that our acquaintance Fabrique de Urquija and his "ten thousand hombres" (or whatever their number might be) were sunning themselves on the mountains, and lying in wait for us on the dusty road by Puerto Serrano; and any anxiety we might have felt to reach the coast unmolested began to lessen when we set forth again, while the evening sun was verging towards the western sierras of the province, and pursuing an old and narrow path, so old that perhaps the Christian knights of King Ferdinand might have traversed it to battle with the Emirs of Granada, of Seville, and Cordova, we rode on, amid varied scenery, where luxuriant creepers almost veiled the granite rocks like natural curtains, where large fields of maize surrounded ancient villages left ruined and roofless in the late civil wars, where herds of half wild cattle browsed on the green mountain slope; where the dead man's cross, the wayside chapel, the groves of cork, of olive or orange trees bordered the devious path, and the shattered atalaya that whilome watched the frontiers of Mohammed of Cadiz, towered over all, a landmark to the Guadalquiver.
Charmed by the scenery, we allowed the reins to fall on the necks of our horses, and careless as to whether or not we found quarters for the night in an olive wood or in Trohniona, which we were now approaching, and the little spire of which we saw peeping above its bright green groves and tipped with a fiery gleam, we rode on slowly until near a well which flowed into a stone basin, under a rude representation of our Lady of Assistance—a wayside chapel, in fact—a turn of the path brought us suddenly upon two armed Spaniards, who were seated on the sward playing with cards in the twilight, for the time was evening now.