Leaving Miraflores, our travellers broke tenderly to their coachmen their wish to go on to Cardena. One of them utterly refused, saying the road was impassable; the other, _moyennant_ an extra gratuity, undertook to try it, but stipulated that the gentlemen should walk, and the ladies do the same, if necessary. Winding round the convent garden walls, and then across a bleak wild moor, they started, and soon found themselves involved in a succession of ruts and sloughs of despond which more than justified the hesitation of their driver. On the coach-box was an imp of a boy, whose delights consisted in quickening the fears of the most timid among the ladies by invariably making the horses gallop at the most difficult and precipitous parts of the road, and then turning round and grinning at the fright he had given them. It is needless to say that the carriage was not his property. At last, the horses came to a stand-still; they could go no further, and the rest of the way had to be done on foot. But our travellers were not to be pitied; for the day was lovely, and the path across the moor was studded with flowers. At last, on climbing over a steep hill which had intercepted their view, they came on a lovely panorama, with a background of blue mountains tipped with snow; a wooded glen, in which the brown convent nestled, and a wild moor foreground, across which long strings of mules with gay trappings, driven by peasants in Spanish costumes, exactly as represented in Ansdell's paintings, were wending their way toward the city. { 165} Tired as some of our party were, this glorious view seemed to give them fresh strength, and they rapidly descended the hill by the hollow path leading to the convent. Over the great entrance is a statue of the Cid, mounted on his favorite horse, "Babicca," who bore him to his last resting-place, and was afterward buried beside the master he loved so well. But the grand old building seemed utterly deserted, and a big mastiff, fastened by an ominously slight chain to the doorway, appeared determined to defy their attempts to enter. At last, one of them, more courageous than the rest, tempting the Cerberus with the remains of her luncheon, got past him, and wandered through the cloister, up a fine staircase to a spacious corridor, in hopes of finding a guide to show them the way to the chapel, where lay the object of their expedition, that is, the monument of the Cid. But she was only answered by the echo of her own footsteps. The cells were empty; the once beautiful library gutted and destroyed; the refectory had nothing in it but bare walls--the whole place was like a city of the dead. At last, she discovered a staircase lending down to a cloister on the side opposite the great entrance, and there a low-arched door, which she found ajar, admitted her into the deserted church. The tomb of the Cid has been removed from the high altar to a side Chapel; and there is interred likewise, his faithful and devoted wife Ximena, and their two daughters. On his shield is emblazoned the "tizona," or sparkling brand, which the legends affirm he always carried in his hand, and with which he struck terror into the hearts of the infidels. This church and convent, built for the Benedictines by the Princess Sancho, in memory of her son Theodoric, who was killed out hunting, was sacked by the Moors in the ninth century, when 200 of the monks were murdered. A tablet in the south transept still remains, recording the massacre; but the monument of Theodoric has been mutilated and destroyed. The Christian spoilers have done their work more effectually than the Moslem! Sorrowfully our travellers left this beautiful spot, thinking bitterly on the so-called age of progress which had left the abode of so much learning and piety to the owls and the bats; and partly walking, partly driving, returned without accident to the city. One more memento of the Cid at Burgos deserves mention. It is the lock on which he compelled the king, Alonso VI., to swear that he had had no part in his brother Sancho's assassination at Zamora. All who wished to confirm their word with a solemn oath used to touch it, till the practice was abolished by Isabella, and the lock itself hung up in the old church of St. Gadea, on the way to the castle hill, where it still rests. This is the origin of the peasant custom of closing the hand and raising the thumb, which they kiss in token of asseveration; and in like manner we have the old Highland saying: "There's my thumb. I'll not betray you."