"
Governor Manco and the Soldier.
WHILE Governor Manco, or "the one-armed," kept up a show of military
state in the Alhambra, he became nettled at the reproaches continually
cast upon his fortress, of being a nestling place of rogues and
contrabandistas. On a sudden, the old potentate determined on
reform, and setting vigorously to work, ejected whole nests of
vagabonds out of the fortress and the gipsy caves with which the
surrounding hills are honeycombed. He sent out soldiers, also, to
patrol the avenues and footpaths, with orders to take up all
suspicious persons.
One bright summer morning, a patrol, consisting of the testy old
corporal who had distinguished himself in the affair of the notary,
a trumpeter and two privates, was seated under the garden wall of
the Generalife, beside the road which leads down from the mountain
of the sun, when they heard the tramp of a horse, and a male voice
singing in rough, though not unmusical tones, an old Castilian
campaigning song.
Presently they beheld a sturdy, sunburnt fellow, clad in the
ragged garb of a foot-soldier, leading a powerful Arabian horse,
caparisoned in the ancient Morisco fashion.
Astonished at the sight of a strange soldier descending, steed in
hand, from that solitary mountain, the corporal stepped forth and
challenged him.
"Who goes there?"
"A friend."
"Who and what are you?"
"A poor soldier just from the wars, with a cracked crown and empty
purse for a reward.
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