It is needless to say that those first called to partake of the mess, as the master of the house, who had been a soldier, called it, were the strange woman and her son.  
"And what part of the country are you from?" said John Joseph to his guest, as he offered her a slice of a magnificent watermelon, which sparkled like a garnet in the light.
 
"From Treveles, in the Alpujarras," she answered.
 
"I was there when I served the king," responded John Joseph. "Those are poor villages. Treveles is a village overhanging the ravine of Poqueira."
 
"That is true," replied the poor woman, whose sorrowful face brightened a little at the recollection, so dear to the heart, of the place where she was born and where her home was.
 
"And by the same token," continued John Joseph, "you can see from there the peaks of Mulha Hasem and Veleta, that don't reach the sky because the Almighty wouldn't let them, and not because they didn't try."
 
"And why do they call that peak the Veleta, [a weather-vane.] John Joseph?
Is it because it has one on it?"
 
"If it has, I never saw it."
 
"It has none now," said the stranger, "but it had one in former times, when Moors and Christians went fighting one another through the mountains. It was guarded by an angel who kept it pointed toward Spain, and then the Christians conquered; but if he neglected his task, the devil came and made it point toward Barbary, and then the Moors conquered."
 
"But, in spite of all the devil could do, we drove them out; yes, and we would have done it if there had been ten times as many of them!" said the ex-soldier.
 
"And were you ever on those peaks?" said the mistress of the house to her guest.
 
"I was never there myself," answered the latter; "but my Manuel has been there a hundred times. Once he went there with an Englishman who wanted to see them. Between the two peaks there is a ravine that is full of water; and that is a cauldron that the demons made. From the middle of it come strange sounds that are caused by the hammering of the demons mending the cauldron. The whole place is a desert, full of naked rocks, and so awesome and solitary that the Englishman said it was like the Dead Sea—a sea that it seems there is in some of those far-off countries."
 
"Oh, mother! and why did it die?" asked the girl.
 
"How should I know?" answered the mother.
 
"Father," said the girl, repeating her question: "why did that sea die?
Did the Moors kill it?"
 
"What a question!" returned the father, who did not wish to confess his ignorance of the matter, as his wife had done: "it died because everything in the world dies, even the seas."
 
"And is the whole mountain like that?" asked Maria.
 
"No, for lower down there are trees,—chestnuts, oaks and shrubs, and some fine apple trees planted by the Moors, whose fruit is sent to Granada to be sold."
 
"And I was told," continued John Joseph, "that there are wild goats there that run faster than water down a hill, that leap like grasshoppers, and that are so sagacious that they always station one of their number on a height to keep watch, and when danger is approaching he strikes the rock with his foot, and then the others scamper off and disappear like a flight of partridges."
 
"That is all true," responded the guest; "and there are owls there, too, a kind of birds with wings and a human face."
 
"What is that you are saying, Senora?" cried John Joseph, "who ever saw such birds as those?"
 
............