Better a thousand times that a handful of French officers and men should be allowed to join the enemy's ranks than that the national honor of Spain should be soiled by a massacre perpetrated just after a surrender." "The Englishman is right," Father Ignacio said positively.

"Let us waste no further words on it.

Besides, I have a reason of my own.

I started before daybreak without breakfast and have got nothing but a piece of dry bread with me.

If we don't accept these fellows' surrender we may be on the hillside all night, and I told my servant that I should have a larded capon and a flask of my best wine for dinner.