“I ‘picked it up,’ as you call it, in the collection of medieval manuscripts of the Harvard Library, and copied it,” returned Miss Mannersley coldly as she turned away.

But I was not inclined to let her off so easily.  I presently made my way to her side.  “Your uncle was complimentary enough to consult me as to the meaning of the appearance of a certain exuberant Spanish visitor at his house the other night.”  I looked into her brown eyes, but my own slipped off her velvety pupils without retaining anything.  Then she reinforced her gaze with a pince-nez, and said carelessly: 

“Oh, it’s you?  How are you?  Well, could you give him any information?”

“Only generally,” I returned, still looking into her eyes.  “These people are impulsive.  The Spanish blood is a mixture of gold and quicksilver.”

She smiled slightly.  “That reminds me of your volatile friend.  He was mercurial enough, certainly.  Is he still dancing?”

“And singing sometimes,” I responded pointedly.  But she only added casually, “A singular creature,” without exhibiting the least consciousness, and drifted away, leaving me none the wiser.  I felt that Enriquez alone could enlighten me.  I must see him.

I did, but not in the way I expected.  There was a bullfight at San Antonio the next Saturday afternoon, the usual Sunday performance being changed in deference to the Sabbatical habits of the Americans.  An additional attraction was offered in the shape of a bull-and-bear fight, also a concession to American taste, which had voted the bullfight “slow,” and had averred that the bull “did not get a fair show.”  I am glad that I am able to spare the reader the usual realistic horrors, for in the Californian performances there was very little of the brutality that distinguished this function in the mother country.  The horses were not miserable, worn-out hacks, but young and alert mustangs; and the display of horsemanship by the picadors was not only wonderful, but secured an almost absolute safety to horse and rider.  I never saw a horse gored; although unskillful riders were sometimes thrown in wheeling quickly to avoid the bull’s charge, they generally regained their animals without injury.

The Plaza de Toros was reached through the decayed and tile-strewn outskirts of an old Spanish village.  It was a rudely built oval amphitheater, with crumbling, whitewashed adobe walls, and roofed only over portions of the gallery reserved for the provincial “notables,” but now occupied by a few shopkeepers and their wives, with a sprinkling of American travelers and ranchmen.  The impalpable adobe dust of the arena was being whirled into the air by the strong onset of the afternoon trade winds, which happily, however, helped also to dissipate a reek of garlic, and the acrid fumes of cheap tobacco rolled in cornhusk cigarettes.  I was leaning over the second barrier, waiting for the meager and circuslike procession to enter with