alligators and their mothers sharks—Ben
was a perfect Cid, a gentleman, from the
crown of his head to the tips of his toes. He
had only one tongue, had Ben; and his heart
was pure and transparent as if it had been
one flawless crystal. There was no whining
guide-book cant about Ben. May no nettles
grow upon his grave, but roses of the pure
blood! Ben was a man of knightly honour,
and as like Don Quixote in face and stature
and bearing as though he had been his twin
brother. When I first saw him disentangling
with chivalrous eagerness and feudal
subjection (that proud virtue of days when men
were not ashamed of rendering superiors
obedience) the knotty wire of the pale ale
bottle, with the red pyramid stamped on
it, I turned quite scarlet, as though you had
struck me in the face, and thought at last I
had found the Don. But at that moment
Spanker cried out, after rummaging his
pockets:

"I say Ben, run and get my betting-book;
I left it on the table in the room where we
had our grub—quick!"

Ben strided off too much like a guide to be
the Don, so that bubble went to pieces.

"I am afraid of Silly Jane," said Spanker,
"and I shall hedge. Wouldn't you? I asked
Ben; but he didn't like to give an opinion.
Besides, would you believe it? these fellows
here don't seem to care about the Gib
races.

"Now Ben, what have we seen to-day?"

Ben being appealed to as the incarnation
of Spanker's memory, crossed his legs without
a smile, and began: "The fish-market—"

"Ah! I remember the smell of it. Strong
old place."

"Yes (gravely), strong old place. The
Rivergate, called the Eargate, where the mob,
at the sixteen hundred and twenty-one
festival, tore off the ears of some ladies in
trying to get out their ear-rings; the Gate of
the Daggers it used to be called, because
here the police stuck up the knives they had
taken away from rogues. Then the Gate of
the Spoons, and the fruit-market—then
the palace on the north side of the Moorish
plaza, where lived—do I speak correctly?—
the archbishop, whose sermons Gil Blas said
smelt of apoplexy—"

"Awful swell book, Gil Blas; many a
flogging I got at school translating that.
Well, go on, Ben; we saw so much, I've
forgot half."

"Ah! you English officers always will see
so much. Then the Moorish house in the
covered street by the Bonita fountain, where
they have just found, in a hole in a wall, a
key, a Moorish deed, and some coins, that
must have been concealed in there, when the
Moors were expelled from the city, by some
one who expected to return again. Then we
went to the square where the Moors had
their bull-fights and combats of the jerreed."

"Who's he?"

"The jerreed, sare, was the cane javelin
used by the Moors.

"O, I see! Is that all? Well, and what
are we going to do this evening? Mind, no
more pictures, and no more churches; for I
will not see them, d'ye hear, Ben?"

"This evening, sare, we must go to the
disused gold-washings in the Darro, and see
where it joins the Xenil; where at twelve,
on Saint John's eve, the pretty ladies all go
and wash their faces, that they may have
good complexions for all the year."

"The little muffs! " says Spanker, laughing.
"O the archbishop's palace we've seen;
the pomegranate wood is too far off; and
bother the Xenil and the Darro, I've had
enough of it. Get those bits of the Moorish
tiling, Ben, for me, I ordered."

"What was that verse of the Sequadilla,
about the two rivers rushing to meet like
lovers, Ben?"

"I know,

           "'Darro tiene prometido
              El casarse con Xenil'"—

"O give it us in English!"

            "'Darro has promised to marry Xenil
                    "To marry" should follow "to woo."
              Her portion will be, so they told it to me,
                     The New Square and Zacatin too.'

because the Darro in time of rain flows up
the new square and runs up the Zacatin.
Well, there is the burial-place of Ferdinand
and Isabella to see—'Small small space for so
much greatness,' said Charles the Fifth; the
church where Saint Nicholas drove out the
thieves; the old Moorish palace of Boabdil's
brother, now a charcoal warehouse; the
Moorish baths, now used by the washerwomen;
then there is the Silversmiths'
Street"—

"There, Ben, that will do; quite enough
if we do half that. Now for a run once more
through the Alhambra; and then, Ben, for
the tilt-yard in Charles the Fifth's unfinished
palace, where they fight the young bulls now,
and where Ben will read us that curious
account of the tournament in Philip the
Second's time that he has dug out and put
together out of two or three of their old
historians. This Ben is always reading. It
seems a shame wasting time, doesn't it,
Blank? I'm for moving."

We were all for moving. Ben began to
prove to us it would take at least three more
weeks to see Granada properly. Again we
brushed our way through the tangled boughs
of the great republic of fig-trees, pomegranates,
and cypresses, bound with chains of
vine boughs, in the palace gardens, under the
castle balconies, where Moorish princesses
once listened by night, fancying each
nightingale in the olive-trees a serenading lover.
We smoked our weeds in the queen's
bathroom, under the blue dome starred with
white. We got on the old terraces above,