better than being shot, and besides, if you set about it properly, you’ll live like a prince as long as the minons*** and the coast-guard don’t lay their hands on your collar.’
* The ordinary food of a Spanish soldier.
** Ustilar a pastesas, to steal cleverly, to purloin
without violence.
*** A sort of volunteer corps.
“In this attractive guise did this fiend of a girl describe the new career she was suggesting to me,—the only one, indeed, remaining, now I had incurred the penalty of death. Shall I confess it, sir? She persuaded me without much difficulty. This wild and dangerous life, it seemed to me, would bind her and me more closely together. In future, I thought, I should be able to make sure of her love.
“I had often heard talk of certain smugglers who travelled about Andalusia, each riding a good horse, with his mistress behind him and his blunderbuss in his fist. Already I saw myself trotting up and down the world, with a pretty