Below them they presently beheld a cluster of twinkling lights to advertise a township.

They dropped swiftly down, and in the outskirts overtook a belated bullock-cart, whose ungreased axle was arousing the hillside echoes with its plangent wail.
Of the vigorous young woman who marched barefoot beside it, shouldering her goad as if it were a pikestaff, Mr.Butler inquired--by his usual method--if this were Tavora, to receive an answer which, though voluble, was unmistakably affirmative.
"Covento Dominicano ?" was his next inquiry, made after they had gone some little way.
The woman pointed with her goad to a massive, dark building, flanked by a little church, which stood just across the square they were entering.
A moment later the sergeant, by Mr.Butler's orders, was knocking upon the iron-studded main door.

They waited awhile in vain.

None came to answer the knock; no light showed anywhere upon the dark face of the convent.

The sergeant knocked again, more vigorously than before.
Presently came timid, shuffling steps; a shutter opened in the door, and the grille thus disclosed was pierced by a shaft of feeble yellow light.
A quavering, aged voice demanded to know who knocked.
"English soldiers," answered the lieutenant in Portuguese.