The Firebrand

by S. R. Crockett

  CHAPTER XXVIII

  THE DEAD AND THE LIVING

  Not a word more was uttered between the two. La Giralda, for no reasonthat she would acknowledge even to herself, had conceived an infiniterespect for Sergeant Cardono, and was ready to obey him implicitly--afact which shows that our sweet Concha was over-hasty in supposing thatone woman in any circumstances can ever answer for another when there isa man in the case.

  But on this occasion La Giralda's submission was productive of no morethan a command to go down into the town of San Ildefonso, the whitehouses of which could clearly be seen a mile or two below, while thesergeant betook himself to certain haunts of the gipsy and the brigandknown to him in the fastnesses of the Guadarrama.

  Like a dog La Giralda complied. She sharpened a stick with a knife whichshe took from a little concealed sheath in her leathern leggings, andwith it she proceeded to quicken the donkey's extremely deliberate pace.

  Then with the characteristic cry of the goatherd, she gathered her flocktogether and drove them before her down the deeply-rutted road which ledfrom the farmhouse. She had not proceeded far, however, when shesuddenly turned back, with a quick warning cry to her cavalcade. Thedonkey instantly stood still, patient amid its fagots as an image in achurch. The goats scattered like water poured on flat ground, and beganto crop stray blades of grass, invisible to any eyes but their own, amidwastes of cracked earth and deserts of grey water-worn pebbles.

  As she looked back, Sergeant Cardono was disappearing up among thetumbled foot-hills and dry beds of winter torrents, which render thelower spurs of the Guadarrama such a puzzle to the stranger, and such aparadise for the smuggler and _guerrillero_. In another moment he haddisappeared. With a long quiet sigh La Giralda stole back to thefarmhouse. In spite of her race, and heathenish lack of creed, the sparkof humanity was far from dead in her bosom. The thought of the open eyesof the little girl, which gazed even in death with fixed rapture uponher wooden treasure, remained with her.

  "The woman is as old as I--she can bide her time!" she muttered toherself. "But the child--these arms are not yet so shrunken that theycannot dig up a little earth to lay the babe thereunder."

  And at the chamber door La Giralda paused. Like her people, she wasneither a good nor yet a bad Catholic. Consciously or unconsciously sheheld a more ancient faith, though she worshipped at no shrine, told nobeads, and uttered no prayers.

  "They have not been long dead," she said to herself, as she entered;"the window is open and the air is sweet. Yet the plague, which snatchesaway the young and strong, may look askance at old Giralda's hold onlife, which at the best is no stronger than the strength of abasting-thread!"

  Having said these words she advanced to the low trundle-bed, and,softly crooning in an unknown tongue over the poor dead babe, shelovingly closed its eyes, and taking a sheet from a wall-press thatstood partially open, she began to enwrap the little girl in its crispwhite folds. The Spaniards are like the Scottish folk in this, that theyhave universally stores of the best and finest linen.

  La Giralda was about to lay the wooden puppet aside as a thing of littleworth, but something in the clutch of the small dead hands touched andtroubled her. She altered her intention.

  "No, you shall not be parted!" she said, "and if there be a resurrectionas the priests prate of--why, you shall e'en wake with the doll in yourarms!"

  So the pair, in death not divided, were wrapt up together, and the gipsywoman prepared to carry her light burden afield. But before doing so shewent to the bed. It was an ancient woman who lay thereon, clutching thebed-clothes, and drawn together with the last agony. La Giralda gazed ather a moment.

  "You I cannot carry--it is impossible," she muttered; "you must takeyour chance--even as I, if so be that the plague comes to me from thisinnocent!"

  Nevertheless, she cast another coverlet over the dead woman's face, andwent down the broad stairs of red brick, carrying her burden like aprecious thing. La Giralda might be no good Catholic, no ferventProtestant, but I doubt not the First Martyr of the faith, the Preacherof the Mount, would have admitted her to be a very fair Christian. Onthe whole I cannot think her chances in the life to come inferior tothose of the astute Don Baltasar Varela, Prior of the Abbey ofMontblanch, or those of many a shining light of orthodoxy in a worldgiven to wickedness.

  Down in the shady angle of the little orchard the old gipsy found alittle garden of flowers, geranium and white jasmine, perhaps planted tocast into the rude coffin of a neighbour, _Yerba Luisa_, or lemonverbena for the decoctions of a simple pharmacopoeia, on the outskirtsof these a yet smaller plot had been set aside. It was edged with whitestones from the hillside, and many coloured bits of broken crockerydecorated it. A rose-bush in the midst had been broken down by somehasty human foot, or perhaps by a bullock or other large trespassinganimal. There were nigh a score of rose-buds upon it--all now parchedand dead, and the whole had taken on the colour of the soil.

  La Giralda stood a moment before laying her burden down. She had thestrong heart of her ancient people. The weakness of tears had notvisited her eyes for years--indeed, not since she was a girl, and hadcried at parting from her first sweetheart, whom she never saw again. Soshe looked apparently unmoved at the pitiful little square of crackedearth, edged with its fragments of brown and blue pottery, and at thebroken rose-bush lying as if also plague-stricken across it, dusty,desolate, and utterly forlorn. Yet, as we have said, was her heart by nomeans impervious to feeling. She had wonderful impulses, this parchedmahogany-visaged Giralda.

  "It is the little one's own garden--I will lay her here!" she said toherself.

  So without another word she departed in search of mattock and spade. Shefound them easily and shortly, for the hireling servants of the househad fled in haste, taking nothing with them. In a quarter of an hour thehole was dug. The rose-tree, being in the way, was dragged out andthrown to one side. La Giralda, who began to think of her donkey andgoats, hastily deposited the babe within, and upon the white linen thered earth fell first like thin rain, and afterwards, when the sheet wascovered, in lumps and mattock-clods. For La Giralda desired to be gone,suddenly becoming mindful of the precepts of the Sergeant.

  "No priest has blessed the grave," she said; "I can say no prayers overher! Who is La Giralda that she should mutter the simplest prayer? Butwhen the Master of Life awakes the little one, and when He sees the lookshe will cast on her poor puppet of wood, He will take her to His bosomeven as La Giralda, the mother of many, would have taken her! God, theGood One, cannot be more cruel than a woman of the heathen!"

  And so with the broken pottery for a monument, and the clasp of infanthands about the wooden doll for a prayer to God, the dead babe was leftalone, unblessed and unconfessed--but safe.

  * * * * *

  Meanwhile we must go over the hill with Sergeant Cardono. Whatever histhoughts may have been as he trudged up the barren glens, seamed andtorn with the winter rains, no sign of them appeared upon his sunburntweather-beaten face. Steadily and swiftly, yet without haste, he heldhis way, his eyes fixed on the ground, as though perfectly sure of hisroad, like a man on a well-beaten track which he has trod a thousandtimes.

  For more than an hour he went on, up and ever up, till his feet crispedupon the first snows of Penalara, and the hill ramparts closed in. Butwhen he had reached the narrows of a certain gorge, he looked keenly toeither side, marking the entrance. A pile of stones roughly heaped oneupon the other fixed his attention. He went up to them and attentivelyperused their structure and arrangement, though they appeared to havebeen thrown together at random. Then he nodded sagely twice and passedon his way.

  The glen continued to narrow overhead. The sunshine was entirely shutout. The jaws of the precipice closed in upon the wayfarer as if tocrush him, but Sergeant Cardono advanced with the steady stride of amountaineer, and the aplomb of one who is entirely sure of hisreception.

  The mountain silence grew stiller all about. None had passed that way(so it s
eemed) since the beginning of time. None would repass till timeshould be no more.

  Suddenly through the utter quiet there rang out, repeated andreduplicated, the loud report of a rifle. The hills gave back thechallenge. A moment before the dingy bedrabbled snow at Cardono's feethad been puffed upwards in a white jet, yet he neither stopped for thisnor took the least notice. Loyal or disloyal, true or false, he was abrave man this Sergeant Cardono. I dare say that any one close to himmight have discerned his beady eyes glitter and glance quickly from sideto side, but his countenance was turned steadfastly as ever upon thesnow at his feet.

  Again came the same startling challenge out of the vague emptiness ofspace, the bullet apparently bursting like a bomb among the snow. Andagain Cardono took as much notice as if some half-dozen of villageloungers had been playing ball among the trees.

  Only when a third time the _whisk_ of the bullet in the snow a yard ortwo to the right preceded the sound of the shot, Cardono shook his headand muttered, "Too long range! The fools ought to be better taught thanthat!" Then he continued his tramp steadily, neither looking to theright nor to the left. The constancy of his demeanour had its effectupon the unseen enemy. The Sergeant was not further molested; and thoughit was obvious that he advanced each step in about as great danger ofdeath as a man who is marched manacled to the garrote, he might simplyhave been going to his evening billet in some quiet Castilian village,for all the difference it made in his appearance.

  Up to this point Cardono had walked directly up the torrent bed, therounded and water-worn stones rattling and slipping under his iron-shodhalf-boots, but at a certain point where was another rough cairn ofstones, he suddenly diverged to the right, and mounted straight up thefell over the scented thyme and dwarf juniper of the mountain slopes.

  Whatever of uncertainty as to his fate the Sergeant felt was rigidlyconcealed, and even when a dozen men dropped suddenly upon him fromvarious rocky hiding-places, he only shook them off with a quick gestureof contempt, and said something in a loud voice which brought them allto a halt as if turned to stone by an enchanter's spell.

  The men paused and looked at each other. They were all well armed, andevery man had an open knife in his hand. They had been momentarilychecked by the words of the Sergeant, but now they came on again asthreateningly as before. Their dark long hair was encircled by redhandkerchiefs knotted about their brows, and in general they possessedteeth extraordinarily white gleaming from the duskiest of skins. Thebeady sloe-black eyes of the Sergeant were repeated in almost everyface, as well as that indefinable something which in all lands marks thegipsy race.

  The Sergeant spoke again in a language apparently more intelligible thanthe deep Romany password with which he had first checked their deadlyintentions.

  "You have need of better marksmen," he said; "even the Migueletes couldnot do worse than that!"

  "Who are you?" demanded a tall grey-headed gipsy, who like the Sergeanthad remained apparently unarmed; "what is your right to be here?"

  The Sergeant had by this time seated himself on a detached boulder andwas rolling a cigarette. He did not trouble to look up as he answeredcarelessly, "To the Gitano my name is Jose Maria of Ronda!"

  The effect of his words was instantaneous. The men who had been ready tokill him a moment before almost fell at his feet, though here and theresome remained apparently unconvinced.

  Prominent among these was the elderly man who had put the question tothe Sergeant. Without taking his eyes from those of the Carlist soldierhe exclaimed, "Our great Jose Maria you cannot be. For with these eyes Isaw him garrotted in the Plaza Mayor of Salamanca!"

  The Sergeant undid his stock and pointed to a blood-red band about hisneck, indented deeply into the skin, and more apparent at the back andsides than in front.

  "Garrotted in good faith I was in the Plaza of Salamanca, as thisgentleman says," he remarked with great coolness. "But not to death. Theexecutioner was as good a _Gitano_ as myself, and removed the spikewhich strikes inward from the back. So you see I am still Jose Maria ofRonda in the flesh, and able to strike a blow for myself!"

  The gipsies set up a wild yell. The name of the most celebrated and mostlawless of their race stirred them to their souls.

  "Come with us," they cried; "we are here for the greatest plunder evertaken or dreamed of among the Romany----"

  "Hush, I command you," cried the elder man. "Jose Maria of Ronda thisman may be, but we are _Gitanos_ of the North, and need not a man fromAndalucia to lead us, even if he carry a scarlet cravat about his neckfor a credential!"

  The Sergeant nodded approval of this sentiment and addressed the oldgipsy in deep Romany, to which he listened with respect, and answered ina milder tone, shaking his head meanwhile.

  "I have indeed heard such sayings from my mother," he said, "and Igather your meaning; but we _Gitanos_ of the North have mingled too muchwith the outlander and the foreigner to have preserved the ancientpurity of speech. But in craft and deed I wot well we are to the full asgood Roms as ever."

  By this time it was clear to the Sergeant that the old man was jealousof his leadership; and as he himself was by no means desirous of takingpart in a midnight raid against a plague-stricken town, he proceeded tomake it clear that, being on his way to his own country of Andalucia andhad been led aside by the gipsy cryptograms he had observed by thewayside and the casual greeting of the crook-backed imp of the village.

  Upon this the old man sat down beside Sergeant Cardono, or, as his newfriends knew him to be, Jose Maria the brigand. He did not talk aboutthe intended attack as the Sergeant hoped he would. Being impressed bythe greatness of his guest, he entered into a minute catalogue of thecaptures he had made, the men he had slain as recorded on the butt ofhis gun or the haft of his knife, and the cargoes he had successfully"run" across the mountains or beached on the desolate sands ofCatalunia.

  "I am no inlander," he said, "I am of the sea-coast of Tarragona. I havenever been south of Tortosa in my life; but there does not live a manwho has conducted more good cigars and brandy to their destination thanold Pepe of the Eleven Wounds!"

  The sergeant with grave courtesy reached him a well-rolled cigarette.

  "I have heard of your fame, brother," he said; "even at Ronda and on theMadrid-Seville road your deeds are not unknown. But what of this ventureto-night? Have you enough men, think you, to overpower the town watchmenand the palace-guards?"

  The old gipsy tossed his bony hands into the air with a gesture ofincomparable contempt.

  "The palace guards are fled back to Madrid," he cried, "and as to thetown watch they are either drunk or in their dotage!"

  Meantime the main body of the gipsies waited patiently in thebackground, and every few minutes their numbers were augmented by thearrival of others over the various passes of the mountains. These tooktheir places without salutation, like men expected, and fell promptly tolistening to the conversation of the two great men, who sat smokingtheir cigarettes each on his own stone in the wide wild corrie among therocks of the Guadarrama which had been chosen as an appropriaterendezvous.

  Singularly enough, after the sergeant had shown the scarlet mark of thestrangling ring about his neck, no one of all that company doubted for amoment that he was indeed the thrice-famous Jose Maria of Ronda. Noneasked a question as to his whence or whither. He was Jose Maria, andtherefore entitled not only to be taken at once into the secrets ofEgypt, but also, and it pleased him, to keep his own.

  And very desperate and bloody some of 'his own' were. In the presentinstance, plunder and bloodshed were to proceed hand in hand. No quarterwas to be given to old or young. The plague-stricken sick man and thewatcher by the bed, the woman feeding her fire of sticks under her_puchero_, the child asleep on its pillow, the Queen in the palace, thePrincess in her nursery--all were to die, quickly and suddenly. Thesemen had sworn it. The dead were no tale-tellers. That was the way ofEgypt--the ancient way of safety. Were they not few and feeble in themidst of innumerable hordes of the _Busne_? Had they
not been drivenlike cattle, abused like dogs, sent guiltless to the scaffold, shot inbatches by both warring parties? Now in this one place at least, theywould do a deed of vengeance at which the ears of the world wouldtingle.

  The Sergeant sat and smoked and listened. He was no stranger to suchtalk. It was the way of his double profession of Andalucian bandit andCarlist _guerrilero_, to devise and execute deeds of terror and death.But nothing so cold-blooded as this had Jose Maria ever imagined. He hadindeed appropriated the governmental mails till the post-bags almostseemed his own property, and the guards handed them down withoutquestion as to a recognised official. He had, in his great days,captured towns and held them for either party according to the good thematter was likely to do himself. But there was something revolting inthis whole business which puzzled him.

  "Whose idea was all this?" he asked at last. "I would give much to seethe _Gitano_ who could devise such a stroke."

  The grim smile on the countenance of old Pepe of the Eleven Wounds grewyet more grim.

  "No gipsy planned it and no man!" he said sententiously. "Come hither,Chica!"

  And out from among the listening throng came a girl of thirteen orfourteen, dressed neatly and simply in a grey linen blouse belted at thewaist with a leather belt. A gay plaid, striped of orange and crimson,hung neatly folded over her shoulder, and she rested her small sunburnthand on the silver hilt of a pistol. Black elf-locks escaped frombeneath a red silk kerchief knotted saucily after the fashion of hercompanions. But her eyes, instead of being beady and black with thatfar-away contemplative look which characterises the children of Egypt,were bright and sunny and blue as the Mediterranean itself in the frontof spring.

  "Come hither, Chica--be not afraid," repeated old Pepe of the ElevenWounds, "this is a great man--the greatest of all our race. You haveheard of him--as who, indeed, has not!"

  Chica nodded with a quick elfish grin of intense pleasure andappreciation. "I was listening," she said, "I heard all. And Isaw--would that I could see it again. Oh, if only the like would happento me!"

  "Tell the noble Don Jose who you are, my pretty Chica," said Pepe,soothingly.

  But the child stamped her sandalled foot. It was still white at theinstep, and the sergeant could see by the blue veins that she had notgone long barefoot. The marks of a child either stolen for ransom or runaway from home owing to some wild strain in the blood were too obviousto be mistaken. Her liberty of movement among the gipsies made thelatter supposition the more probable.

  "I am _not_ pretty Chica, and I am not little," she cried angrily. "Iwould have you remember, Pepe, that _I_ made this plan, which the folkof Egypt are to execute to-night. But since this is the great brigandDon Jose of Ronda, who was executed at Salamanca, I will tell him allabout it."

  She looked round at the dark faces with which they were surrounded.

  "There are new folk among these," she said, "men I do not know. Bid themgo away. Else I will not speak of myself, and I have much to say to DonJose!"

  Pepe of the Eleven Wounds looked about him, and shook his head. Gipsydomis a commonwealth when it comes to a venture like this, and save in thepresence of some undoubted leader, all Egypt has an equal right to hearand to speak. Pepe's authority was not sufficient for this thing. Butthat of the Sergeant was.

  He lifted his Montera cap and said, "I would converse a while with thismaid on the affairs of Egypt. 'Tis doubtless no more than you knowalready, and then, having heard her story my advice is at your service.But she will not speak with so many ears about. It is a woman's whim,and such the wisest of us must sometimes humour."

  The gipsies smiled at the gay wave of his hand with which Cardonouttered this truism and quickly betook themselves out of earshot ingroups of ten and a dozen. Cards were produced, and in a few minuteshalf a score of games were in progress at different points of thequarry-like cauldron which formed the outlaws' rendezvous.

  At once the humour of the child changed.

  "They obeyed you," she said; "I like you for that. I mean to have manymen obey me when I grow up. Then I will kill many--thousands andthousands. Now I can do nothing--only I have it in my head--here!"

  The elf tapped her forehead immediately underneath the red sash whichwas tied about it. The Sergeant, though eager to hear her story andmarvelling at such sentiments from the lips of a child, successfullyconcealed his curiosity, and said gently, "Tell me how you came to thinkof to-night----"

  "Of what to-night?" asked the girl quickly and suspiciously.

  "The deed which is to be done to-night," replied the Sergeant simply, asthough he were acquainted with the whole.

  She leaped forward and caught him by the arm.

  "You will stay and go with us? You will lead us?" she hissed, her blueeyes aflame and with trembling accents, "then indeed will I be sure ofmy revenge. Then the Italian woman and her devil's brat shall notescape. Then I shall be sure--sure!"

  She repeated the last words with concentrated fury, apparentlyimpossible to one of her age. The Sergeant smoked quietly and observedher. She seemed absolutely transfigured.

  "Tell me that you will," she cried, low and fierce, so that her voiceshould not reach the men around; "these, when they get there, will thinkof nothing but plunder. As if rags and diamonds and gold were worthventuring one's life for. But I desire death--death--death, do you hear?To see the Italian woman and her paramour pleading for their lives, onewailing over against the other, on their knees. Oh, I know them and thebrat they call the little Queen! To-night they shall lie dead under myhands--with this--with this!"

  And the girl flashed a razor-keen blade out of her red waistband. Shethrust the hilt forward into the Sergeant's hands as if in token offealty.

  "See," she said, touching the edge lovingly, "is it not sharp? Will itnot kill surely and swiftly? For months I have sharpened it--ah, andto-night it will give me my desire!"

  It was the Sergeant's belief that the girl was mad, nevertheless hewatched her with his usual quiet scrutiny, the power of which sheevidently felt. For she avoided his eyes and hastened on with her storybefore he had time to cross-question her.

  "Why do I hate them? I see the question on your lips. Because theItalian woman hath taken away my father and slain my mother--slain heras truly and with far sharper agony than she herself shall know when Iset this knife to her throat. I am the daughter of Munoz, and I sworerevenge on the man and on the woman both when I closed my mother's eyes.My mother's heart was broken. Ah, you see, she was weak--not like me! Itwould take a hundred like the Neapolitan to break my heart; and as forthe man, though he were thrice my father, he should beg his life invain."

  She snatched her knife jealously out of his hand, tried its edge on theback of her hand with a most unchildlike gesture, and forthwithconcealed it in her silken _faja_. Then she laid her hand once more onthe Sergeant's arm.

  "You will lead us, will you not, Jose Maria?" she said pleadingly. "Ican trust you. You have done many great deeds. My nurse was a woman ofRonda and told me of your exploits on the road from Madrid to Sevilla.You will lead us to-night. Only you must leave these three in the palaceto me. If you will, you shall have also my share of the plunder. Butwhat do I say, I know you are too noble to think only of that--as thesewolves do!"

  She cast a haughty glance around upon the gipsies at their card-play.

  "I, that am of Old Castile and noble by four descents, have demeanedmyself to mix with _Gitanos_," she said, "but it has only been that Imight work out my revenge. I told Pepe there of my plan. I showed himthe way. He was afraid. He told ten men, and they were afraid. Fifty,and they were afraid. Now there are a hundred and more, and were it notthat they know that all lies open and unguarded, even I could not leadthem thither. But they will follow you, because you are Jose Maria ofRonda." The Sergeant took the girl's hand in his. She was shaking aswith an ague fit, but her eyes, blue and mild as a summer sky, had thatwithin them which was deadlier than the tricksome slippery demon thatlurks in all black orbs, whether masculine or feminine.<
br />
  "Chica," he said, "your wrongs are indeed bitter. I would give much tohelp you to set the balance right. Perhaps I may do so yet. But I cannotbe the commander of these men. They are not of my folk or country. Theyhave not even asked me to lead them. They are jealous of me! You see itas well as I!"

  "Ah!" cried the girl, laying her hand again on his cuff, "that isbecause they do not wish you to share their plunder. But tell them thatyou care nothing for that and they will welcome you readily enough. Theplace is plague-stricken, I tell you. The palace lies open. Littlecrook-backed Chepe brought me word. He says he adores me. He is of thevillage of Frias, back there behind the hills. I do not love him, eventhough he has a bitter heart and can hate well. Therefore I suffer him."

  The Sergeant rose to his feet and looked compassionately down at thevivid little figure before him. The hair, dense and black, the blueeyes, the red-knotted handkerchief, the white teeth that showed betweenthe parted lips clean and sharp as those of a wild animal. Cardono hadseen many things on his travels, but never anything like this. His soulwas moved within him. In the deeps of his heart, the heart of a Spanishgipsy, there was an infinite sympathy for any one who takes up the bloodfeud, who, in the face of all difficulties, swears the _vendetta_. Butthe slim arms, the spare willowy body, the little white sandalled feetof the little girl--these overcame him with a pitifully amused sense ofthe disproportion of means to end.

  "Have you no brother, Senorita?" he said, using by instinct the title ofrespect which the little girl loved the most. She saw his point in amoment.

  "A brother--yes, Don Jose! But my brother is a cur, a dog that eatsoffal. Pah! I spit upon him. He hath taken favours from the woman. Hehath handled her money. He would clean the shoes they twain leave attheir chamber door. A brother--yes; the back of my hand to suchbrothers! But after to-night he shall have no offal to eat--no bonesthrown under the table to pick. For in one slaying I will kill theItalian woman Cristina, the man Munoz who broke my mother's heart, andthe foisted changeling brat whom they miscall the daughter of Fernandoand the little Queen of Spain!"

  She subsided on a stone, dropped her head into her hands, and took nofurther notice of the Sergeant, who stood awhile with his hand restingon her shoulder in deep meditation. There was, he thought, no more to besaid or done. He knew all there was to know. The men had not asked himto join them, so he would venture no further questions as to the timeand the manner of attack. They were still jealous of him with thateasily aroused jealousy of south and north which in Spain divides eventhe clannish gipsy.

  Nevertheless he went the round of the men. They were mostly busy withtheir games, and some of them even snatched the stakes in to them, lesthe should demand a percentage of the winnings after the manner ofSevilla. The Sergeant smiled at the reputation which distance and manytongues had given him. Then, with a few words of good fellowship andthe expression of a wish for success and abundant plunder, he bade themfarewell. It was a great deed which they designed and one worthy of hisbest days. He was now old, he said, and must needs choose easiercourses. He did not desire twice to feel the grip of the collar of iron.But young blood--oh, it would have its way and run its risks!

  Here the Sergeant smiled and raised his Montera cap. The men ascourteously bade him good-day, preserving, however, a certain respectfuldistance, and adding nothing to the information he had already obtained.

  But Chica, seated on her stone, with her scarlet-bound head on her hand,neither looked up nor gave him any greeting as his feet went slowly downthe rocky glen and crunched over the begrimed patches of last year'ssnow, now wide-pored and heavy with the heat of noonday.