man against the prejudices and perils that awaited him in that peaceful place, and must bring forward and magnify each small circumstance of his good behavior.
"But he drinks no wine," Borromeo accused with severity. "He is nothing but a woman with a beard."
"They may not have wine in his country, it is likely that he doesn't know what it is," Magdalena contended. "See—I will show him that it is to drink."
She took the goblet that stood brimming at the stranger's hand just as she had filled it for him, lifted it with a smile, sipped, and offered it to him. He received it from her with his face aglow in the smile that moved his beard, bowed over it as if he stooped to kiss her hand, lifted it high, and drained it in one stiff swig.
"Ha-a-a!" Borromeo let his breath go in a sigh of admiration; "after all, he drinks like a Christian and a man!"
"He is not such a barbarian, he salutes with his goblet like any gentleman," Don Geronimo said. He sat across from the stranger, Magdalena at his side, Sergeant Olivera at the table-end, Borromeo at the other. The stranger smiled in friendly encouragement, as he might have smiled on children who had drawn near him timidly, one foot lifted to dash away at the first alarm.
"Not once has he lifted meat with his fingers," Magdalena said.
