the ditch; whence, however, he sprang on his feet, and catching our hidalgo by the arm hurried him back through the garden to the gate where his horse stood tethered.  There they mounted and rode away into safety, the dead behind the living.  ‘All this is enchantment to me,’ said the youth as they went.  ’But I must thank you, my friend; for whether dead or alive—­and to my thinking you must be doubly dead—­ you have rendered me a great service.’  ’You may say a mass for me, and thank you,’ the dead man answered; ’but for the service you must thank the Mother of God, who commanded me and gave me power to deliver you, and has charged me to tell you the reason of her kindness:  which is, that every day you say her rosary.’  ’I do thank her and bless her then,’ replied the youth, ’and henceforth will I say her rosary not once daily but thrice, for that she hath preserved my life to-night.’”

“A very proper resolution,” said my uncle.

“And I hope, sir, he kept it,” chimed in Billy Priske; “good Protestant though I be.”

“The story is not ended,” said my father.  “The dead man—­they were dismounted now and close under the gallows—­looked at the young man angrily, and said he, ’I doubt Our Lady’s pains be wasted, after all.  Is it possible, sir, you think she sent me to-night to save your life?’ ‘For what else?’ inquired the youth.  ’To save your soul, sir, and your lady’s; both of which (though you guessed not or forgot it) stood in jeopardy just now, so that the gate open to you was indeed the gate of Hell.  Pray hang me back as you found me,” he concluded, ‘and go your ways for a fool.’”

“Now see what happened.  The murderers in the house, coming down to bury the body and finding it not, understood that the young man had not come alone; from which they reasoned that his servants had carried him off and would publish the crime.  They therefore, with their master, hurriedly fled out of the country.  The lady betook herself to a religious house, where in solitude questioning herself she found that in will, albeit not in act, she had been less than faithful.  As for the hidalgo, he rode home and shut himself within doors, whence he came forth in a few hours as a man from a sepulchre—­which, indeed, to his enemies he evidently was when they heard that he was abroad and unhurt whom they had certainly stabbed to death; and to his friends almost as great a marvel when they perceived the alteration of his life; yea, and to himself the greatest of all, who alone knew what had passed, and, as by enchantment his life had taken this turn, so spent its remainder like a man enchanted rather than converted.  I am told,” my father concluded, “though the sermon says nothing about it, that he and the lady came in the end, and as by an accident, to be buried side by side, at a little distance, in the Chapel of Our Lady of Succour in the Cathedral church of Valencia, and there lie stretched—­two parallels of dust—­to meet only at the Resurrection when the desires of all dust shall be purged away.”