An eagle would fly over it, and another eagle would follow him, for a nest had been robbed and a friendship destroyed! As the mountains enlarged he fell in with an Englishman of rank, a nobleman given to the study of literature and peoples, amateur on the way to connoisseurship, and now traveling in Spain.

He journeyed _en prince_ with his secretary and his physician, servants and pack-horses, and, in addition, for at least this part of Spain, an armed escort furnished by the authorities, at his proper cost, against just those banditti dangers that haunted this strip of the globe.

This noble found in the laird of Glenfernie a chance-met gentleman worth cultivating and detaining at his side as long as might be.

They had been together three or four days when at eve they came to the largest inn of a town set at a short distance from the mountain pass through which ran their further road.

Here, at dusk, they dismounted in the inn-yard, about them a staring, commenting crowd.