"I congratulate you on getting her out," the colonel said.

"Travers was telling us the day after you left what a curious coincidence it was that the nun who threw him out a letter should turn out to be a cousin of yours. Will you tell us how you managed it?"

"I don't mind telling it, sir, if all here will promise not to repeat it. The Bishop of Oporto is a somewhat formidable person, and were he to lodge a complaint against me he might get me into serious trouble, and is perfectly capable of having me stabbed some dark night in the streets of Lisbon; therefore, I think it would be as well to omit any details of the share he played in the matter. Without that the story is simple enough. Having got a boat with two men in it at the end of the street in which stood the convent, I went there in the dress of an ecclesiastic, just as the French burst into the town. The bishop had fled on the night before to the Serra Convent on the other side of the river, and I was able to produce an authority from him which satisfied the lady superior that I was the bearer of his order for her and the nuns to make for the bridge, and to cross the river at once.