ruined tower apparently intended to guard a Moorish aqueduct.  He struck the foundation with the butt-end of his spear.  A rumbling sound was heard, and the solid stones yawned apart, leaving an opening as wide as a door.

“‘Enter in the name of the Holy Trinity’, said the soldier, ’and fear nothing.’  The student’s heart quaked, but he made the sign of the cross, muttered his Ave Maria, and followed his mysterious guide into a deep vault cut out of the solid rock under the tower, and covered with Arabic inscriptions.  The soldier pointed to a stone seat hewn along one side of the vault.  ‘Behold,’ said he, ’my couch for three hundred years.’  The bewildered student tried to force a joke.  ‘By the blessed St. Anthony,’ said he, ’but you must have slept soundly, considering the hardness of your couch.’

“’On the contrary, sleep has been a stranger to these eyes; incessant watchfulness has been my doom.  Listen to my lot.  I was one of the royal guards of Ferdinand and Isabella; but was taken prisoner by the Moors in one of their sorties, and confined a captive in this tower.  When preparations were made to surrender the fortress to the Christian sovereigns, I was prevailed upon by an alfaqui, a Moorish priest, to aid him in secreting some of the treasures of Boabdil in this vault.  I was justly punished for my fault.  The alfaqui was an African necromancer, and by his infernal arts cast a spell upon me—­to guard his treasures.  Something must have happened to him, for he never returned, and here have I remained ever since, buried alive.  Years and years have rolled away; earthquakes have shaken this hill; I have heard stone by stone of the tower above tumbling to the ground, in the natural operation of time; but the spell-bound walls of this vault set both time and earthquakes at defiance.

“’Once every hundred years, on the festival of St. John, the enchantment ceases to have thorough sway; I am permitted to go forth and post myself upon the bridge of the Darro, where you met me, waiting until some one shall arrive who may have power to break this magic spell.  I have hitherto mounted guard there in vain.  I walk as in a cloud, concealed from mortal sight.  You are the first to accost me for now three hundred years.  I behold the reason.  I see on your finger the seal-ring of Solomon the Wise, which is proof against all enchantment.  With you it remains to deliver me from this awful dungeon, or to leave me to keep guard here for another hundred years.’

“The student listened to this tale in mute wonderment.  He had heard many tales of treasures shut up under strong enchantment in the vaults of the Alhambra, but had treated them as fables.  He now felt the value of the seal-ring, which had, in a manner, been given to him by St. Cyprian.  Still, though armed by so potent a talisman, it was an awful thing to find himself tete-a-tete in such a place with