“Those fellows have been very quiet of late, and it will probably be some time before they are stirring again,” said Lord Strathern.

“We will give them reason to bestir themselves as soon as the corn is grown enough to fodder our horses,” answered L’Isle.  “Meanwhile, Lady Mabel, there is much worth seeing in Portugal.  All is not like the wilderness of Alemtejo.  If you will believe the Portuguese, it was not to the imagination of the poet, but to the eye of the traveler in Lusitania, that we owe the poetic pictures of the Elysian fields.  All the Portuguese agree that their country is crowded with the choice beauties and wonders of nature, and they certainly should know their own country best.  I have seen enough of it to satisfy me, that though but a little corner of the smallest of the continents, it is a lovely and remarkable part of the earth.  Its beautiful mountains, not sublime, perhaps, like the Alps and Pyrenees, but exquisitely rich and wonderful in coloring, with a variety of romantic and ever-shifting scenery, are perhaps unrivaled in Europe; its grand rivers, often unite on their banks the wildest rocks with the loveliest woodland scenes; its balmy climate fosters in many places an ever green foliage and a perpetual spring.”

“From your description of the country,” said Lady Mabel, “one might take you for a Portuguese.”

“Yet they themselves have little perception of the real beauties of nature,” said L’Isle.  “They will lead you away from the loveliest scene in their land, to point out some curiosity, more to their taste; some miraculous image, some saintly relic brought by angels from the Holy Land, or, perhaps, some local natural phenomenon, which has a dash of the wonderful about it.  For instance, when at Braga, three years ago, with my hands full of business, and anxious at the same time to learn all I could of the country around, my Portuguese companion compelled me to waste a precious hour in visiting a famous spring in the garden of a convent of St. Augustine.  The water, you must know, is intensely cold, and if a bottle of wine be immersed in it, it is instantly turned into vinegar.”

“Did you see that?” asked Lady Mabel.

“When I called for a bottle of wine, the good fathers told me they had given all they had to a detachment of Portuguese troops that marched by the day before—­a charity more wondrous than the virtue of the spring.”

“Yet it is a pity you could not test the virtues of this wonderful spring,” said she.

“Not more wonderful,” said L’Isle, “than the fountain in the village of Friexada.  Its water, too, is excessively cold, and of so hungry a nature, that in less than an hour it consumes a joint of meat, leaving the bones quite bare.”

“You of course tested that,” said she.

“Unluckily,” said L’Isle, “our party had only one leg of mutton in store, and were too hungry to risk their dinner in the fountain’s maw.”