Crabbed age and youth cannot live together;  Youth is full of pleasure, age is full of care; 
Youth like summer morn, age like winter weather; 
Youth like summer brave, age like winter bare. 
Youth is full of sport, age's breath is short; 
Youth is nimble, age is lame; 
Youth is hot and bold, age is weak and cold; 
Youth is wild, and age is tame. 
???????? ???????? ???????? Shakspeare.
They had ridden but a short way, when Lady Mabel, reining in her horse, placed herself along side of Moodie, to ask how he felt now. She feared lest he might be too unwell to undergo the fatigues of the day. But, thanks to L'Isle's prescription, Moodie was already another man. He sat bolt upright in the saddle, with a martial air, and looked around as if ready for any emergency. She no longer felt any fears for him. His curiosity, too, seemed to be awakened, for he said: "You are a great botanist, my lady, and know every kind of plant. Pray, what were those two tall trees near the farmer's house, with bare trunks and feathery tops?"
 
"They are date palms," said Lady Mabel. "You see more and more of them the nearer you get to Africa."
 
"Indeed!" said Moodie, with more astonishment than the information seemed to warrant.
 
"Yes," she continued; "and they bear a luscious and nourishing fruit, which, in the deserts of Africa, is the chief food of the people. It is to them what oatmeal is to the Scot."
 
"And how far are we from Africa?" said Moodie, dreading the answer, but striving to put the question in an indifferent tone.
 
"Why some people say that Africa begins at the Pyrenees, but Colonel L'Isle, who knows the country thoroughly, says that the Sierra de Monchique is the true boundary. The kingdom of Algarve, lying beyond those mountains, is, in climate, soil, and vegetation, truly African; and it is only the strip of salt water that separates it from Morocco, that prevents its forming part of that country."
 
"I never heard of the kingdom of Algarve before," said Moodie, pondering the information he had received. "How far are we from it?"
 
"We will not find it a long day's journey to one of the chief towns," said Lady Mabel. "Its name—its name is Mauropolis, the city of the Moors. It lies on the border of Algarve, just like Berwick on the border of Scotland, only Algarve is a beautiful and fertile country, which poor Scotland is only to a Scot."
 
"It is an ill bird that fouls its own nest," growled Moodie in an undertone. "Have you forgot, my lady, that you are yourself a Scot!"
 
"A Scot!" said she, deliberately, as if now first considering that point. "My mother was an Englishwoman. So far, I am not a Scot."
 
"But your father! Your father, my lady!" Moodie angrily exclaimed. "He is a true Scot, and knows the worth of old Scotland well."
 
"He does, indeed," said she; "and has always thought it an excellent country—to come from; so he marched off at eighteen, and has seldom been back there since."
 
"So we are on the borders of Africa!" exclaimed Moodie, speaking to himself aloud.
 
"Why, do you not see Moodie, that the people grow darker, each day, as we travel on?"
 
"The innkeeper at Evora is dark enough," said he, that truth flashing on him; "but the farmer and his girls are browner still by many a shade."
 
"You will think them fair," said Lady Mabel, "when you have traveled far enough onward," and, leaving him confused and alarmed, she cantered on to join Mrs. Shortridge.
 
Now Moodie was a shrewd man, perhaps a little too shrewd, with an eye open to human depravity; he was learned, too, in his way; many a heavy tome of Scotch controversial divinity had been thumbed by him as carefully as his Bible; but he never dwelt on any thing he found there not sustaining his preconceived notions. He involuntarily slighted those parts even of Scripture that he could not wrest to his purpose. Many an historical and traditionary fact, too, floated loosely on his mind; but his geographical education had been sadly neglected. A topographical knowledge of half a dozen shires, a general notion of the shape of old Scotland, and a hazy outline of the sister kingdom, made up all he had attained to. Had you laid before him a chart of the sea coast of Bohemia, first discovered by our great dramatist, it would not have startled him in the least, and he was ready to look for Africa at any point of the compass.
 
He now saw clearly that this journey was part of a plot. L'Isle had first won the confidence of father and daughter; then availing himself of her love for botany, had habituated her to his presence and protection on short excursions around Elvas; he had used the commissary and his wife to beguile Lady Mabel from her father's protection, under pretence of a short journey to a neighboring town. Having now rid himself of the innocent commissary, he was leading her by devious paths far beyond pursuit. Lady Mabel seemed bewitched, and no longer saw with her own eyes. Was Mrs. Shortridge a simple gull or something worse? "Perhaps," thought Moodie, "Colonel Bradshawe is right;" for an eaves-dropping valet had given his scandal wings.
 
Moodie was not deeply read in romance; but he remembered the traditionary tale of the young Scotch heiress, who, while a party of her retainers were escorting her to the house of her guardian, was set upon by a neighboring chieftain at the head of his clan. Her followers, concealing the girl under a huge caldron, stood round it for her defence, and when the last man had fallen the victorious suitor carried off the girl, and married her for her lands. This, too, was a plain case of abducting an heiress, not indeed by violence, but with consummate art. Setting aside the rare attractions of the lady, in Moodie's estimation the prize was immense. L'Isle, with all his lofty airs, was but a commoner, with perhaps no fortune but his sword, a mere adventurer, and Lord Strathern's broad acres were an irresistible temptation; though, in truth, this coveted domain counted thousands of acres of sheep-walk to the hundreds of plough land.
 
Having made this matter clear to his own mind, Moodie cursed in his heart Lord Strathern's fatuity and the facile disposition Lady Mabel had so unexpectedly betrayed. But, though sorely troubled, he was not a man to despair. He resolved to watch L'Isle closely, and to rack his own invention for some way to foil his schemes, while taking care not to betray the least suspicion of them.
 
Meanwhile, Lady Mabel, as she could not herself visit Algarve, was extracting from L'Isle a full account of that delightful region. And he described well the picturesque and lofty mountains that cut off its narrow strip of maritime territory from the rest of Portugal; its tropical vegetation and its animal life, its perpetual summer, tempered alternately by the ocean and the mountain breeze. When he mentioned any fact which Lady Mabel thought might liken this region to Africa in Moodie's imagination, she would turn and repeat it for his benefit. Thus, the wolves and the wild boars abounding in the mountains, became to him nameless monsters infesting the country; the serpents were magnified in bulk, and the poisonous lizard redoubled its venom. The fevers common there grew more malignant; the plague broke out occasionally, and a few earthquakes were thrown in to enliven the narrative. She garbled it too, sadly, suppressing the fact that Algarve had furnished a large proportion of the adventurers who had discovered and conquered India and Brazil, and its mariners of this day, the best in Portugal, she converted into Barbary corsairs. She said nothing about Algarve having been the first province to rise against the French, or about the half-dozen adventurous seamen who had sailed boldly in a fishing-boat to Brazil, to inform the regent that Portugal still dared to struggle and to hope.
 
L'Isle overheard and wondered at her perversion of his account of Algarve, without detecting her motive, and Moodie thought her evident desire to visit this region proved her little less than mad, for only her version of select portions of L'Isle's remarks reached his ears.
 
"It is singular," said L'Isle, "that the Moors should have been more thoroughly driven out of Algarve, the most southern province, than out of others north of it. Its maritime position perhaps made it easy for them to escape to Morocco. But the people are not so dark as in Alemtejo, and many of the women are beautifully fair. In fact, I have seen as lovely faces there as in any country but our own."
 
Lady Mabel took care not to enlighten Moodie by repeating to him this observation, and he remained convinced that L'Isle had been describing beforehand to the ladies the country he was leading them to.
 
"The heat, fatigue, and discomfort of the last four days had almost worn out Mrs. Shortridge's strength, and now suggested to Lady Mabel some sage reflections on travel in general, as the result of her experience.
 
"Traveling is certainly one of the pleasures of life, with this peculiarity, that it affords most pleasure when the journey is over. With all the interest and excitement attending it, there are some drawbacks. We gratify our curiosity at times at no little cost. In the search after strange manners, the traveler may have to adopt them; in inspecting the various conditions under which men can live, we must often subject ourselves to these conditions, and thus acquire practical experience in place of theoretical knowledge. We cannot, like Don Cleofus, command the services of Asmodeus, to enable us to be lookers-on without becoming parties in the scenes we witness. To know how the Arab lives, we must for a time become an Arab; and to pry into the inner mysteries of Hottentot life, you must make yourself a Hottentot."
 
"And to estimate the prisoner's woes," L'Isle suggested, "you must try the virtues of a dungeon—musty straw, and bread and water."
 
"That would be buying the knowledge dearly," said she; "but I would like to try how the life of a nun would suit me."
 
"It would suit you the least of all women," said Mrs. Shortridge. "You might die in the cloister, but could not live there."
 
"Oh, I am sure I could stand a short novitiate, say three or six months," exclaimed Lady Mabel.
 
"Your novitiate, soon to end in freedom," said L'Isle, "would not help you to the experience of the true internal life of the nun. It is pleasant to walk, leading your horse by the rein, and at liberty to mount when you like; but the essence of monastic life lies in the conviction that you have turned your back forever on the world without, with all its trials, its hopes and fears, its passions and pursuits, and have given yourself religiously to tread through this life, the narrow path you have chosen, to the next."
 
"You have convinced me," said Lady Mabel. "In my longing after a varied experience of the conditions of life, I might sacrifice half a year to the trial of one, but I prefer ignorance on this point to the burden of a life-enduring vow."
 
"If our knowledge were limited by our own experience, we would know little indeed," said L'Isle. "Our capacity to bring home to ourselves other conditions than our own, depends more on the transferring and transforming faculties of the imagination, than on the observing powers of the eye. If, indeed, we had never felt bodily pain, we could not feel for a man on the rack. Had we never known anguish of mind, we might not estimate the mental agonies of others. But we have feelings, for the exercise of which sympathy and imagination can create conditions. We can feel with the captive in the dungeon, without going down there to take a place by his side."
 
"Still, there is nothing like experience in one's own person," said Mrs. Shortridge. "I can now sympathize fully with the toilworn traveler, across a parched and thirsty desert, under a broiling sun. I own that the pleasures of this journey far exceed its pains, thanks to your care and company; but, as Lady Mabel says, the chief pleasure comes afterward, and this journey will be still more pleasant next week than now."
 
"In spite of its hardships," said Lady Mabel, "it has been so agreeable to me, that I would have it last a week longer. As an escort, interpreter, and cicerone, Colonel L'Isle has no rival. He has, too, filled the commissary's place so well, that we have suffered nothing from your good man's desertion."
 
The pleasure Lady Mabel expressed, and her frank admission that she wished the journey longer, delighted L'Isle. He longed to tell her that he was ever at her command as companion, guardian, and guide on any journey, however long. But no—he must not say that. He had no thoughts of matrimony—at least, just now. A remote prospect did indeed float before his eyes, in which he saw himself having outlived this war, and attained the rank of Major-General, returning home to find Lady Mabel still lovely and still free to listen to a lover's suit. This was but a bright vista of the future, hemmed in and overhung by many a dark contingency, a glowing picture in an ebony frame.
 
The character of the country underwent a change as they rode on. Sloping downward toward the Guadiana, over a succession of hills which concealed the descent, the soil became more fertile, but was scarcely more cultivated than in the region which they had just left behind them. The heaths and broom plants now gave place to a variety of evergreen shrubs. Though the forest trees had vanished centuries ago, the prospect was often shut out by the thickets that overspread the country. An occasional spot of open ground indicated some attempts at cultivation, but they saw few peasants, and but one village seated on a hill, until passing a wretched hamlet, they reach the bank of a brook. The shade of some trees, already in full leaf, in this sheltered spot, tempted them to make here their noonday halt.
 
Seating herself on the fern and moss at the foot of an old mulberry-tree that overhung the little stream, Lady Mabel pointed out to her companions, that the trees around them were all of the same kind.
 
"They were doubtless planted here," said L'Isle, "when the silk culture throve in this country, a branch of industry, which, with too many others, has almost died out. Civil disorder and foreign war have been fatal to it. The Spaniards have made Alemtejo their highroad in every invasion of Portugal; and the disasters of late years have completed the ruins of this frontier, so long a debatable land. The country around, is, for the most part, a heath-covered waste, or a wilderness of brushwood; here the silkworm has perished, the peasant's hand is idle, and the amoreira stands with unplucked leaves."
 
"The better for us," said Mrs. Shortridge; "we need its thickest shade."
 
A solitary stork, by the rivulet, was engaged in that gentle sport which Isaac Walton assures us, is so favorable to tranquil meditation. Deep in reverie, the philosopher seemed not to heed their presence. For a time, he stood gravely on one leg, then with a few stately strides, drew nearer to them. They were commenting on his sedate air, and disregard for man's presence, when Moodie came and sat down within ear-shot of them. The bird now raised his head and gave them a searching look. Then bending back his long neck, he uttered a dissatisfied chatter with his snapping beak, and taking wing, sought a sequestered part of the stream, remote from the intruders.
 
"The stork would not thus have shunned natives. He must have found out that we are foreigners and heretics" said Mrs. Shortridge.
 
"It is this arch-heretic, Moodie, that he shuns," said Lady Mabel. "His presence would drive away a whole congregation of storks, who are almost as good churchmen as the monks themselves."
 
"Perhaps quite as good," said Moodie. "My arch-heresy consists in protesting now and always against idolatrous Rome. Some here are not quite as good Protestants as I am."
 
"I never called myself a Protestant," said L'Isle.
 
"Do you not, sir?" exclaimed Moodie. "Pray what are you then?"
 
"I never called myself a Protestant in defining my faith."
 
"And why not, sir," asked Moodie, adding in an under tone. "Now he will show the cloven foot."
 
"Because mine is a positive creed, not to be expressed by negation. In defining it, I can admit no term not expressing some essential point. I would not mistake the accident for the essence. That God has given his revealed word to man, is an essential point in my belief. That Rome has misconstrued that word, may be true, but comes not within the scope of my creed. I believe that Christ by his Apostles founded a church to ramify through the world, like the fruitful vine running over the wall. Some branches may have rotted off, some may bear degenerate fruit, some in unpruned luxuriance may bring forth nothing but leaves. Be it so. My belief is that the branch I cleave to retains its vital vigor and produces life-sustaining fruit."
 
"But how does this prevent your protesting against Rome?" objected Moodie.
 
"It prevents my making that protest any part of the definition of my faith. Names are things, and he who is perpetually dubbing himself a Protestant, ends by making it the first article of his creed, that Rome errs, and his active religion becomes opposition to Rome. Now I find Voltaire quite as good a Protestant as you are."
 
"I can say nothing to that," answered Moodie, "never having met with that gentleman."
 
L'Isle smiled for a moment, but went on earnestly to say: "We believe that Christ not only gave us a fa............