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Title: In Kedar's Tents

Author: Henry Seton Merriman

Release Date: June, 2004  [EBook #5987]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on October 8, 2002]

Edition: 10

Language: English

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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK, IN KEDAR'S TENTS ***




Transcribed from the 1909 Smith, Elder and Co. edition by Les
Bowler, St. Ives, Dorset.



IN KEDAR'S TENTS
by Henry Seton Merriman.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER
I.        ONE SOWETH.
II.       ANOTHER REAPETH.
III.      LIKE SHIPS UPON THE SEA.
IV.       LE PREMIER PAS.
V.        CONTRABAND.
VI.       AT RONDA.
VII.      IN A MOORISH GARDEN.
VIII.     THE LOVE LETTER.
IX.       A WAR OF WIT.
X.        THE CITY OF DISCONTENT.
XI.       A TANGLED WEB.
XII.      ON THE TOLEDO ROAD.
XIII.     A WISE IGNORAMUS.
XIV.      A WEIGHT OF EVIDENCE.
XV.       AN ULTIMATUM.
XVI.      IN HONOUR.
XVII.     IN MADRID.
XVIII.    IN TOLEDO.
XIX.      CONCEPCION TAKES THE ROAD.
XX.       ON THE TALAVERA ROAD.
XXI.      A CROSS-EXAMINATION.
XXII.     REPARATION.
XXIII.    LARRALDE'S PRICE.
XXIV.     PRIESTCRAFT.
XXV.      SWORDCRAFT.
XXVI.     WOMANCRAFT.
XXVII.    A NIGHT JOURNEY.
XXVIII.   THE CITY OF STRIFE.
XXIX.     MIDNIGHT AND DAWN.
XXX.      THE DAWN OF PEACE.



CHAPTER I. ONE SOWETH.



'If it be a duty to respect other men's claims, so also is it a duty
to maintain our own.'

It is in the staging of her comedies that fate shows herself
superior to mere human invention.  While we, with careful regard to
scenery, place our conventional puppets on the stage and bid them
play their old old parts in a manner as ancient, she rings up the
curtain and starts a tragedy on a scene that has obviously been set
by the carpenter for a farce.  She deals out the parts with a fine
inconsistency, and the jolly-faced little man is cast to play Romeo,
while the poetic youth with lantern jaw and an impaired digestion
finds no Juliet to match his love.

Fate, with that playfulness which some take too seriously or quite
amiss, set her queer stage as long ago as 1838 for the comedy of
certain lives, and rang up the curtain one dark evening on no fitter
scene than the high road from Gateshead to Durham.  It was raining
hard, and a fresh breeze from the south-east swept a salt rime from
the North Sea across a tract of land as bare and bleak as the waters
of that grim ocean.  A hard, cold land this, where the iron that has
filled men's purses has also entered their souls.

There had been a great meeting at Chester-le-Street of those who
were at this time beginning to be known as Chartists, and, the Act
having been lately passed that torchlight meetings were illegal,
this assembly had gathered by the light of a waning moon long since
hidden by the clouds.  Amid the storm of wind and rain, orators had
expounded views as wild as the night itself, to which the hard-
visaged sons of Northumbria had listened with grunts of approval or
muttered words of discontent.  A dangerous game to play--this
stirring up of the people's heart, and one that may at any moment
turn to the deepest earnest.

Few thought at this time that the movement awakening in the working
centres of the North and Midlands was destined to spread with the
strange rapidity of popular passion--to spread and live for a
decade.  Few of the Chartists expected to see the fulfilment of half
of their desires.  Yet, to-day, a moiety of the People's Charter has
been granted.  These voices crying in the night demanded an extended
suffrage, vote by ballot, and freedom for rich and poor alike to sit
in Parliament.  Within the scope of one reign these demands have
been granted.

The meeting at Chester-le-Street was no different from a hundred
others held in England at the same time.  It was illegal, and yet
the authorities dared not to pronounce it so.  It might prove
dangerous to those taking part in it.  Lawyers said that the leaders
laid themselves open to the charge of high treason.  In this
assembly as in others there were wirepullers--men playing their own
game, and from the safety of the rear pushing on those in front.
With one of these we have to do.  With his mistake Fate raised the
curtain, and on the horizon of several lives arose a cloud no bigger
than a man's hand.

Geoffrey Horner lived before his time, insomuch as he was a
gentleman-Radical.  He was clever, and the world heeded not.  He was
brilliant, well educated, capable of great achievements, and the
world refused to be astonished.  Here were the makings of a
malcontent.  A well-born Radical is one whom the world has refused
to accept at his own valuation.  A wise man is ready to strike a
bargain with Fate.  The wisest are those who ask much and then take
half.  It is the coward who asks too little, and the fool who
imagines that he will receive without demanding.

Horner had thrown in his lot with the Chartists in that spirit of
pique which makes a man marry the wrong woman because the right one
will have none of him.  At the Chester-le-Street meeting he had
declared himself an upholder of moral persuasion, while in his heart
he pandered to those who knew only of physical force and placed
their reliance thereon.  He had come from Durham with a contingent
of malcontents, and was now returning thither on foot in company
with the local leaders.  These were intelligent mechanics seeking
clumsily and blindly enough what they knew to be the good of their
fellows.  At their heels tramped the rank and file of the great
movement.  The assembly was a subtle foreshadowing of things to
come--of Newport and the march of twenty thousand men, of violence
and bloodshed, of strife between brethren, and of justice nonplussed
and hesitating.

The toil-worn miners were mostly silent, their dimly enlightened
intellects uneasily stirred by the words they had lately heard--
their stubborn hearts full of a great hope with a minute misgiving
at the back of it.  With this dangerous material Geoffrey Horner
proposed to play his game.

Suddenly a voice was raised.

'Mates,' it cried, at the cross-roads, 'let's go and smash
Pleydell's windows!'

And a muttered acquiescence to the proposal swept through the moving
mass like a sullen breeze through reeds.

The desire for action rustled among these men of few words and
mighty arms.

Horner hurriedly consulted his colleagues.  Was it wise to attempt
to exert an authority which was merely nominal?  The principles of
Chartism were at this time to keep within the limits of the law, and
yet to hint, when such a course was safe, that stronger measures lay
behind mere words.  Their fatal habit was to strike softly.

In peace and war, at home and abroad, there is but one humane and
safe rule:  Hesitate to strike--strike hard.

Sir John Pleydell was a member of that Parliament which had treated
the Charter with contempt.  He was one of those who had voted with
the majority against the measures it embodied.

In addition to these damnatory facts, he was a local Tory of some
renown--an ambitious man, the neighbours said, who wished to leave
his son a peerage.

To the minds of the rabble this magnate represented the tyranny
against which their protest was raised.  Geoffrey Horner looked on
him as a political opponent and a dangerous member of the winning
party.  The blow was easy to strike.  Horner hesitated--at the cross
roads of other lives than his own--and held his tongue.

The suggestion of the unknown humorist in the crowd commended itself
to the more energetic of the party, who immediately turned towards
the by-road leading to Dene Hall.  The others--the minority--
followed as minorities do, because they distrusted themselves.  Some
one struck up a song with words lately published in the 'Northern
Liberator' and set to a well-known local air.

The shooting party assembled at Dene Hall was still at the dinner
table when the malcontents entered the park, and the talk of coverts
and guns ceased suddenly at the sound of their rough voices.  Sir
John Pleydell, an alert man still, despite his grey hair and drawn,
careworn face, looked up sharply.  He had been sitting silently
fingering the stem of his wineglass--a habit of his when the ladies
quitted the room--and, although he had shot as well as, perhaps
better than, any present, had taken but little part in the
conversation.  He had, in fact, only half listened, and when a rare
smile passed across his grey face it invariably owed its existence
to some sally made by his son, Alfred Pleydell, gay, light-hearted,
debonnaire, at the far end of the table.  When Sir John's thoughtful
eyes rested on his motherless son, a dull and suppressed light
gleamed momentarily beneath his heavy lids.  Superficial observers
said that John Pleydell was an ambitious man; 'not for himself,'
added the few who saw deeper.

When his quick mind now took in the import of the sound that broke
the outer silence of the night, Sir John's glance sought his son's
face.  In moments of alarm the glance flies to where the heart is.

'What is that?' asked Alfred Pleydell, standing up.

'The Chartists,' said Sir John.

Alfred looked round.  He was a soldier, though the ink had hardly
dried upon the parchment that made him one--the only soldier in the
room.

'We are eleven here,' he said, 'and two men downstairs--some of you
fellows have your valets too--say fifteen in all.  We cannot stand
this, you know. '

As he spoke the first volley of stones crashed through the windows,
and the broken glass rattled to the floor behind the shutters.  The
cries of the ladies in the drawing-room could be heard, and all the
men sprang to their feet.  With blazing eyes Alfred Pleydell ran to
the door, but his father was there before him.

'Not you,' said the elder man, quiet but a little paler than usual;
'I will go and speak to them.  They will not dare to touch me.  They
are probably running away by this time. '

'Then we'll run after 'em,' answered Alfred with a fine spirit, and
something in his attitude, in the ring of his voice, awoke that
demon of combativeness which lies dormant in men of the Anglo-Saxon
race.

'Come on, you fellows!' cried the boy with a queer glad laugh, and
without knowing that he did it Sir John stood aside, his heart warm
with a sudden pride, his blood stirred by something that had not
moved it these thirty years.  The guests crowded out of the room--
old men who should have known better--laughing as they threw aside
their dinner napkins.  What a strange thing is man, peaceful through
long years, and at a moment's notice a mere fighting devil.

'Come on, we'll teach them to break windows!' repeated Alfred
Pleydell, running to the stick rack.  The rain rattled on the
skylight of the square hall, and the wind roared down the open
chimney.  Among the men hastily arming themselves with heavy sticks
and cramming caps upon their heads were some who had tasted of
rheumatism, but they never thought of an overcoat.

'We'll know each other by our shirt fronts,' said a quiet man who
was standing on a chair in order to reach an Indian club suspended
on the wall.

Alfred was at the door leading through to the servants' quarters,
and his summons brought several men from the pantry and kitchens.

'Come on!' he cried, 'take anything you can find--stick or poker--
yes, and those old guns, use 'em like a club, hit very hard and very
often.  We'll charge the devils--there's nothing like a charge--come
on!'

And he was already out of the door with a dozen at his heels.

The change from the lighted rooms to the outer darkness made them
pause a moment, during which time the defenders had leisure to group
themselves around Alfred Pleydell.  A hoarse shout, which indeed
drowned Geoffrey Horner's voice, showed where the assailants stood.
Horner had found his tongue after the first volley of stones.  It
was the policy of the Chartist leaders and wirepullers to suggest
rather than demonstrate physical force.  Enough had been done to
call attention to the Chester-le-Street meeting, and give it the
desired prominence in the eyes of the nation.

'Get back, go to your homes!' he was shouting, with upraised arms,
when the hoarse cry of his adherents and the flood of light from the
opened door made him turn hastily.  In a moment he saw the meaning
of this development, but it was too late.

With a cheer, Alfred Pleydell, little more than a boy, led the
charge, and seeing Horner in front, ran at him with upraised stick.
Horner half warded the blow, which came whistling down his own stick
and paralysed his thumb.  He returned the stroke with a sudden fury,
striking Pleydell full on the head.  Then, because he had a young
wife and child at home, he pushed his way through the struggling
crowd, and ran away in the darkness.  As he ran he could hear his
late adherents dispersing in all directions, like sheep before a
dog.  He heard a voice calling:

'Alfred!  Alfred!'

And Horner, who an hour--nay, ten minutes--earlier had had no
thought of violence, ran his fastest along the road by which he had
lately come.  His heart was as water within his breast, and his
staring eyes played their part mechanically.  He did not fall, but
he noted nothing, and had no knowledge whither he was running.

Alfred Pleydell lay quite still on the lawn in front of his father's
house.



CHAPTER II. ANOTHER REAPETH.



'Attempt the end, and never stand to doubt.'

During the course of a harum-scarum youth in the city of Dublin
certain persons had been known to predict that Mr. Frederick
Conyngham had a future before him.  Mostly pleasant-spoken Irish
persons these, who had the racial habit of saying that which is
likely to be welcome.  Many of them added, 'the young divil,' under
their breath, in a pious hope of thereby cleansing their souls from
guilt.

'I suppose I'm idle, and what is worse, I know I'm a fool,' said
Conyngham himself to his tutor when that gentleman, with a
toleration which was undeserved, took him severely to task before
sending him up for the Bar examination.  The tutor said nothing, but
he suspected that this, his wildest pupil, was no fool.  Truth to
tell, Frederick Conyngham had devoted little thought to the matter
of which he spoke, namely, himself, and was perhaps none the worse
for that.  A young man who thinks too often usually falls into the
error of also thinking too much, of himself.

The examination was, however, safely passed, and in due course
Frederick was called to the Irish Bar, where a Queen's Counsel, with
an accent like rich wine, told him that he was now a gintleman, and
entitled so to call himself.

All these events were left behind, and Conyngham, sitting alone in
his rooms in Norfolk Street, Strand, three days after the breaking
of Sir John Pleydell's windows, was engaged in realising that the
predicted future was still in every sense before him, and in nowise
nearer than it had been in his mother's lifetime.

This realisation of an unpleasant fact appeared in no way to disturb
his equanimity, for, as he knocked his pipe against the bars of the
fire, he murmured a popular air in a careless voice.  The firelight
showed his face to be pleasant enough in a way that left the land of
his birth undoubted.  Blue eyes, quick and kind; a square chin,
closely curling hair, and square shoulders bespoke an Irishman.
Something, however, in the cut of his lips--something close and
firm--suggested an admixture of Anglo-Saxon blood.  The man looked
as if he might have had an English mother.  It was perhaps this
formation of the mouth that had led those pleasant-spoken persons to
name to his relatives their conviction that Conyngham had a future
before him.  The best liars are those who base their fancy upon
fact.  They knew that the ordinary thoroughbred Irishman has usually
a cheerful enough life before him, but not that which is vaguely
called a future.  Fred Conyngham looked like a man who could hold to
his purpose, but at this moment he also had the unfortunate
appearance of not possessing one to hold to.

He knocked the ashes from his pipe, and held the hot briar bowl
against the ear of a sleeping fox terrier, which animal growled,
without moving, in a manner that suggested its possession of a sense
of humour and a full comprehension of the harmless practical joke.

A moment later the dog sat up and listened with an interest that
gradually increased until the door opened and Geoffrey Horner came
into the room.

'Faith, it's Horner!' said Conyngham.  'Where are you from?'

'The North.'

'Ah--sit down.  What have you been doing up there--tub-thumping?'

Horner came forward and sat down in the chair indicated.  He looked
five years older than when he had last been there.  Conyngham
glanced at his friend, who was staring into the fire.

'Edith all right?' he asked carelessly.

'Yes.'

'And--the little chap?'

'Yes.'

Conyngham glanced at his companion again.  Horner's eyes had the
hard look that comes from hopelessness; his lips were dry and white.
He wore the air of one whose stake in the game of life was heavy,
who played that game nervously.  For this was an ambitious man with
wife and child whom he loved.  Conyngham's attitude towards Fate was
in strong contrast.  He held his head up and faced the world without
encumbrance, without a settled ambition, without any sense of
responsibility at all.  The sharp-eyed dog on the hearthrug looked
from one to the other.  A moment before, the atmosphere of the room
had been one of ease and comfortable assurance--an atmosphere that
some men, without any warrant or the justification of personal
success or distinction, seem to carry with them through life.  Since
Horner had crossed the threshold the ceaseless hum of the streets
seemed to be nearer, the sound of it louder in the room; the
restlessness of that great strife stirred the air.  The fox terrier
laid himself on the hearthrug again, but instead of sleeping watched
his two human companions.

Conyngham filled his pipe.  He turned to the table where the
matchbox stood at his elbow, took it up, rattled it, and laid it
down.  He pressed the tobacco hard with his thumb, and, turning to
Horner, said sharply:

'What is it?'

'I don't know yet; ruin, I think.'

'Nonsense, man!' said Conyngham cheerily.  'There is no such thing
in this world.  At least, the jolliest fellows I know are bankrupts,
or no better.  Look at me:  never a brief; literary contributions
returned with thanks; balance at the bank, seventeen pounds ten
shillings; balance in hand, none; debts, the Lord only knows!  Look
at me!  I'm happy enough.'

'Yes, you're a lonely devil.'

Conyngham looked at his friend with inquiry in his gay eyes.

'Ah! perhaps so.  I live alone, if that is what you mean.  But as
for being lonely--no, hang it!  I have plenty of friends, especially
at dividend time.'

'You have nobody depending on you,' said Horner with the
irritability of sorrow.

'Because nobody is such a fool.  On the other hand, I have nobody to
care a twopenny curse what becomes of me.  Same thing, you see, in
the end.  Come, man, cheer up.  Tell me what is wrong.  Seventeen
pounds ten shillings is not exactly wealth, but if you want it you
know it is there, eh?'

'I do not want it, thanks,' replied the other.  'Seventeen hundred
would be no good to me. '

He paused, biting his under lip and staring with hard eyes into the
fire.

'Read that,' he said at length, and handed Conyngham a cutting from
a daily newspaper.

The younger man read, without apparent interest, an account of the
Chester-le-Street meeting, and the subsequent attack on Sir John
Pleydell's house.

'Yes,' he commented, 'the usual thing.  Brave words followed by a
cowardly deed.  What in the name of fortune you were doing in that
galere you yourself know best.  If these are politics, Horner, I say
drop them.  Politics are a stick, clean enough at the top, but
you've got hold of the wrong end.  Young Pleydell was hurt, I see--
"seriously, it is feared."'

'Yes,' said Horner significantly; and his companion, after a quick
look of surprise, read the slip of paper carefully a second time.
Then he looked up and met Horner's eyes.

'Gad!' he exclaimed in a whisper.

Horner said nothing.  The dog moved restlessly, and for a moment the
whole world--that sleepless world of the streets--seemed to hold its
breath.

'And if he dies,' said Conyngham at length.

'Exactly so,' answered the other with a laugh--of scaffold mirth.

Conyngham turned in his chair and sat with his elbows on his knees,
his face resting on his closed fists, staring at the worn old
hearthrug.  Thus they remained for some minutes.

'What are you thinking about?' asked Horner at length.

'Nothing--got nothing to think with.  You know that, Geoffrey.  Wish
I had--never wanted it as I do at this moment.  I'm no good, you
know that.  You must go to some one with brains--some clever devil.'

As he spoke he turned and took up the paper again, reading the
paragraph slowly and carefully.  Horner looked at him with a
breathless hunger in his eyes.  At some moments it is a crime to
think, for we never know but that thought may be transmitted without
so much as a whisper.

'"The miners were accompanied by a gentleman from London,"'
Conyngham read aloud, '"a barrister, it is supposed, whose speech
was a feature of the Chester le-Street meeting.  This gentleman's
name is quite unknown, nor has his whereabouts yet been discovered.
His sudden disappearance lends likelihood to the report that this
unknown agitator actually struck the blow which injured Mr. Alfred
Pleydell.  Every exertion is being put forth by the authorities to
trace the man who is possibly a felon and certainly a coward."'

Conyngham laid aside the paper and again looked at Horner, who did
not meet his glance nor ask now of what he was thinking.  Horner,
indeed, had his own thoughts, perhaps of the fireside--modest
enough, but happy as love and health could make it--upon which his
own ambition had brought down the ruins of a hundred castles in the
air--thoughts he scarce could face, no doubt, and yet had no power
to drive away, of the young wife whose world was that same fireside;
of the child, perhaps, whose coming had opened for a time the door
of Paradise.

Conyngham broke in upon these meditations with a laugh.

'I have it!' he cried.  'It's as simple as the alphabet.  This paper
says it was a barrister--a man from London--a malcontent, a felon, a
coward.  Dammy, Geoff--that's me!'

He leapt to his feet.  'Get out of the way, Tim!' he cried to the
dog, pushing the animal aside and standing on the hearthrug.

'Listen to this,' he went on.  'This thing, like the others, will
blow over.  It will be forgotten in a week.  Another meeting will be
held--say in South Wales, more windows will be broken, another young
man's head cracked, and Chester-le-Street (God-forsaken place, never
heard of it!) will be forgotten.'

Horner sat looking with hollow eyes at the young Irishman, his lips
twitching, his fingers interlocked--there is nothing makes so
complete a coward of a man as a woman's love.  Conyngham laughed as
the notion unfolded itself in his mind.  He might, as he himself had
said, be of no great brain power, but he was at all events a man and
a brave one.  He stood a full six foot, and looked down at his
companion, who sat whitefaced and shrinking.

'It is quite easy,' he said, 'for me to disappear in such a manner
as to arouse suspicion.  I have nothing to keep me here; my briefs--
well, the Solicitor-General can have 'em!  I have no ties--nothing
to keep me in any part of the world.  When young Pleydell is on his
feet again, and a few more windows have been broken, and nine days
have elapsed, the wonder will give place to another, and I can
return to my--practice.'

'I couldn't let you do it.'

'Oh yes, you could,' said Conyngham with the quickness of his race
to spy out his neighbour's vulnerable point.  'For the sake of Edith
and the little devil.'

Horner sat silent, and after a moment Conyngham went on.

'All we want to do is to divert suspicion from you now--to put them
on a false scent, for they must have one of some sort.  When they
find that they cannot catch me they will forget all about it.'

Horner shuffled in his seat.  This was nothing but detection of the
thoughts that had passed through his own mind.

'It is easily enough done,' went on the Irishman.  'A paragraph here
and there in some of the newspapers; a few incriminating papers left
in these rooms, which are certain to be searched.  I have a bad
name--an Irish dog goes about the world with a rope round his neck.
If I am caught it will not be for some time, and then I can get out
of it somehow--an alibi or something.  I'll get a brief at all
events.  By that time the scent will be lost, and it will be all
right.  Come, Geoff, cheer up!  A man of your sort ought not to be
thrown by a mischance like this.'

He stood with his legs apart, his hands thrust deep into his
pockets, a gay laugh on his lips, and much discernment in his eyes.

'Oh, d---n Edith!' he added after a pause, seeing that his efforts
met with no response.  'D---n that child!  You used to have some
pluck, Horner.'  Horner shook his head and made no answer, but his
very silence was a point gained.  He no longer protested nor raised
any objection to his companion's hare-brained scheme.  The thing was
feasible, and he knew it.

Conyngham went on to set forth his plans, which with characteristic
rapidity of thought he evolved as he spoke.

'Above all,' he said, 'we must be prompt.  I must disappear to-
night, the paragraphs must be in to-morrow's papers.  I think I'll
go to Spain.  The Carlists seem to be making things lively there.
You know, Horner, I was never meant for a wig and gown--there's no
doubt about that.  I shall have a splendid time of it out there--'

He stopped, meeting a queer look in Horner's eyes, who sat leaning
forward and searching his face with jealous glance.

'I was wondering,' said the other, with a pale smile, 'if you were
ever in love with Edith.'

'No, my good soul, I was not,' answered Conyngham, with perfect
carelessness, 'though I knew her long before you did.'

He paused, and a quick thought flashed through his mind that some
men are seen at their worst in adversity.  He was ready enough to
find excuses for Horner, for men are strange in the gift of their
friendship, often bestowing it where they know it is but ill
deserved.

He rattled on with unbroken gaiety, unfolding plans which in their
perfection of detail suggested a previous experience in outrunning
the constable.

While they were still talking a mutual friend came in--a quick-
spoken man already beginning to be known as a journalist of ability.
They talked on indifferent topics for some time.  Then the new-comer
said jerkily:

'Heard the news?'

'No,' answered Conyngham.

'Alfred Pleydell--young fellow who resisted the Chartist rioters at
Durham--died yesterday morning.'  Frederick Conyngham had placed
himself in front of Horner, who was still seated in the low chair by
the fire.  He found Horner's toe with his heel.

'Is that so?' he said gravely.  'Then I'm off.'

'What do you mean?' asked the journalist with a quick look--the man
had the manner of a ferret.

'Nothing, only I'm off, that's all, old man.  And I cannot ask you
to stay this evening, you understand, because I have to pack.'

He turned slowly on Horner, who had recovered himself, but still had
his hand over his face.

'Got any money, Geoff?' he asked.

'Yes, I have twenty pounds if you want it,' answered the other in a
hoarse voice.

'I do want it--badly.'

The journalist had taken up his hat and stick.  He moved slowly
towards the door, and, there pausing, saw Horner pass the bank-notes
to Conyngham.

'You had better go too,' said the Irishman.  'You two are going in
the same direction, I know.'

Horner rose, and, half laughing, Conyngham pushed him towards the
door.

'See him home, Blake,' he said.  'Horner has the blues to-night.'



CHAPTER III.  LIKE SHIPS UPON THE SEA.



'No one can be more wise than destiny.'

'What are we waiting for? why, two more passengers--grand ladies as
they tell me--and the captain has gone ashore to fetch them,' the
first mate of the 'Granville' barque, of London, made answer to
Frederick Conyngham, and he breathed on his fingers as he spoke, for
the north-west wind was blowing across the plains of the Medoc, and
the sun had just set behind the smoke of Bordeaux.

The 'Granville' was lying at anchor in the middle of the Garonne
river, having safely discharged her deck cargo of empty claret casks
and landed a certain number of passengers.  There are few colder
spots on the Continent than the sunny town of Bordeaux when the west
wind blows from Atlantic wastes in winter time.  A fine powder of
snow scudded across the flat land, which presented a bleak brown
face, patched here and there with white.  There were two more
passengers on board the 'Granville,' crouching in the cabin--two
French gentlemen who had taken passage from London to Algeciras in
Spain, on their way to Algiers.

Conyngham, with characteristic good-nature, had made himself so
entirely at home on board the Mediterranean trader that his presence
was equally welcomed in the forecastle and the captain's cabin.
Even the first mate, his present interlocutor, a grim man given to
muttered abuse of his calling and a pious pessimism in respect to
human nature, gradually thawed under the influence of so cheerful an
acceptance of heavy weather and a clumsy deck cargo.

'The ladies will be less trouble than the empty casks, at all
events,' said Conyngham, 'because they will keep below.'

The sailor shook his head forebodingly and took an heroic pinch of
snuff.

'One's as capable of carrying mischief as the other,' he muttered in
the bigoted voice of a married teetotaller.

The ship was ready for sea, and this mariner's spirit was ever
uneasy and restless till the anchor was on deck and the hawser
stowed.

'There's a boat leaving the quay now,' he added.  'Seems she's
lumbered up forr'ard wi' women's hamper.'

And indeed the black form of a skiff so laden could be seen
approaching through the driving snow and gloom.  The mate called to
the steward to come on deck, and this bearded servitor of dames
emerged from the galley with uprolled sleeves and a fine contempt
for cold winds.  A boy went forward with a coil of rope on his arm,
for the tide was running hard and the Garonne is no ladies' pleasure
stream.  It is not an easy matter to board a ship in mid-current
when tide and wind are at variance, and the fingers so cold that a
rope slips through them like a log-line.  The 'Granville,' having
still on board her cargo of coals for Algeciras, lay low in the
water with both her anchors out and the tide singing round her old-
fashioned hempen hawsers.

'Now see ye throw a clear rope,' shouted the mate to the boy who had
gone forward.  The proximity of the land and the approach of women--
a bete noire no less dreaded--seemed to flurry the brined spirit of
the Granville's' mate.

Perhaps the knowledge that the end of a rope, not judged clear,
would inevitably be applied to his own person, shook the nerve of
the boy on the forecastle--perhaps his hands were cold and his
faculties benumbed.  He cast a line which seemed to promise well at
first.  Two coils of it unfolded themselves gracefully against the
grey sky, and then Confusion took the others for herself.  A British
oath from the deck of the ship went out to meet a fine French
explosion of profanity from the boat, both forestalling the splash
of the tangled rope into the water under the bows of the ship, and a
full ten yards out of the reach of the man who stood, boathook in
hand, ready to catch it.  There were two ladies in the stern of the
boat, muffled up to the eyes, and betokening by their attitude the
hopeless despair and misery which seize the southern fair the moment
they embark in so much as a ferry boat.  The fore part of the heavy
craft was piled up with trunks and other impedimenta of a feminine
incongruity.  A single boatman had rowed the boat from the shore,
guiding it into mid-stream, and there describing a circle calculated
to insure a gentle approach on the lee side.  This man, having laid
aside his oars, now stood, boathook in hand, awaiting the inevitable
crash.  The offending boy in the bows was making frantic efforts to
haul in his misguided rope, but the possibility of making a second
cast was unworthy of consideration.  The mate muttered such a string
of foreboding expletives as augured ill for the delinquent.  The
boatman was preparing to hold on and fend off at the same moment--a
sudden gust of wind gave the boat a sharp buffet just as the man
grappled the mizzen-chains--he overbalanced himself, fell, and
recovered himself, but only to be jerked backwards into the water by
the boathook, which struck him in the chest.

'A moi!' cried the man, and disappeared in the muddy water.  He rose
to the surface under the ship's quarter, and the mate, quick as
lightning, dumped the whole coil of the slack of the main sheet on
to the top of him.  In a moment he was at the level of the rail, the
mate and the steward hauling steadily on the rope, to which he clung
with the tenacity and somewhat the attitude of a monkey.  At the
same instant a splash made the rescuers turn in time to see
Conyngham, whose coat lay thrown on the deck behind them, rise to
the surface ten yards astern of the 'Granville' and strike out
towards the boat, now almost disappearing in the gloom of night.

The water, which had flowed through the sunniest of the sunny plains
of France, was surprisingly warm, and Conyngham, soon recovering
from the shock of his dive, settled into a quick side-stroke.  The
boat was close in front of him, and in the semi-darkness he could
see one of the women rise from her seat and make her way forward,
while her companion crouched lower and gave voice to her dismay in a
series of wails and groans.  The more intrepid lady was engaged in
lifting one of the heavy oars, when Conyngham called out in French:

'Courage, mesdames!  I will be with you in a moment.'

Both turned, and the pallor of their faces shone whitely through the
gloom.  Neither spoke, and in a few strokes Conyngham came
alongside.  He clutched the gunwale with his right hand, and drew
himself breast high.

'If these ladies,' he said, 'will kindly go to the opposite side of
the boat, I shall be able to climb in without danger of upsetting.'

'If mama inclines that way I think it will be sufficient,' answered
the muffled form which had made its way forward.  The voice was
clear and low, remarkably self-possessed, and not without a
suggestion that its possessor bore a grudge against some person
present.

'Perhaps mademoiselle is right,' said Conyngham with becoming
gravity, and the lady in the stern obeyed her daughter's suggestion,
with the result anticipated.  Indeed, the boat heeled over with so
much goodwill that Conyngham was lifted right out of the water.  He
clambered on board and immediately began shivering, for the wind cut
like a knife.

The younger lady made her way cautiously back to the seat which she
had recently quitted, and began at once to speak very severely to
her mother.  This stout and emotional person was swaying backwards
and forwards, and, in the intervals of wailing and groaning, called
in Spanish upon several selected saints to assist her.  At times,
and apparently by way of a change, she appealed to yet higher powers
to receive her soul.

'My mother,' said the young lady to Conyngham, who had already got
the oars out, 'has the heart of a rabbit, but--yes--of a very young
rabbit.'

'Madame may rest assured that there is no danger,' said Conyngham.

'Monsieur is an Englishman--'

'Yes, and a very cold one at the moment.  If madame could restrain
her religious enthusiasm so much as to sit still, we should make
better progress.'

He spoke rather curtly, as if refusing to admit the advisability of
manning the boat with a crew of black-letter saints.  The manner in
which the craft leapt forward under each stroke of the oars
testified to the strength of his arms, and madame presently subsided
into whispers of thankfulness, having reason, it would seem, to be
content with mere earthly aid in lieu of that heavenly intervention
which ladies of her species summon at every turn of life.

'I wish I could help you,' said the younger woman presently, in a
voice and manner suggestive of an energy unusual to her
countrywomen.  She spoke in French, but with an accent somewhat
round and full, like an English accent, and Conyngham divined that
she was Spanish.  He thought also that under their outer wraps the
ladies wore the mantilla, and had that graceful carriage of the head
which is only seen in the Peninsula.

'Thank you, mademoiselle, but I am making good progress now.  Can
you see the ship?'

She rose and stood peering into the darkness ahead--a graceful,
swaying figure.  A faint scent as of some flower was wafted on the
keen wind to Conyngham, who had already decided with characteristic
haste that this young person was as beautiful as she was intrepid.

'Yes,' she answered, 'it is quite close.  They are also showing
lights to guide us.'

She stood looking apparently over his head towards the 'Granville,'
but when she spoke it would seem that her thoughts had not been
fixed on that vessel.

'Is monsieur a sailor?'

'No, but I fortunately have a little knowledge of such matters--
fortunate, since I have been able to turn it to the use of these
ladies.'

'But you are travelling in the "Granville."'

'Yes; I am travelling in the "Granville."'

Over his oars Conyngham looked hard at his interlocutrice, but could
discern nothing of her features.  Her voice interested him, however,
and he wondered whether there were ever calms on the coast of Spain
at this time of the year.

'Our sailors,' said the young lady, 'in Spain are brave, but they
are very cautious.  I think none of them would have done such a
thing as you have just done for us.  We were in danger.  I knew it.
Was it not so?'

'The boat might have drifted against some ship at anchor and been
upset.  You might also have been driven out to sea.  They had no
boat on board the "Granville" ready to put out and follow you.'

'Yes; and you saved us.  But you English are of a great courage.
And my mother, instead of thanking you, is offering her gratitude to
James and John the sons of Zebedee, as if they had done it.'

'I am no relation to Zebedee,' said Conyngham with a gay laugh.
'Madame may rest assured of that.'

'Julia,' said the elder lady severely, and in a voice that seemed to
emanate from a chest as deep and hollow as an octave cask, 'I shall
tell Father Concha, who will assuredly reprove you.  The saints upon
whom I called were fishermen, and therefore the more capable of
understanding our great danger.  As for monsieur, he knows that he
shall always be in my prayers.'

'Thank you, madame,' said Conyngham gravely.

'And at a fitter time I hope to be able to tender him my thanks.'

At this moment a voice from the 'Granville' hailed the boat, asking
whether all was well and Mr. Conyngham on board.  Being reassured on
this point, the mate apparently attended to another matter requiring
his attention, the mingled cries and expostulations of the cabin boy
sufficiently indicating its nature.

The boat, under Conyngham's strong and steady strokes, now came
slowly and without mishap alongside the great black hull of the
vessel, and it soon became manifest that, although all danger was
past, there yet remained difficulty ahead; for when the boat was
made fast and the ladder lowered, the elder of the two ladies firmly
and emphatically denied her ability to make the ascent.  The French
boatman, shivering in a borrowed great coat, and with a vociferation
which flavoured the air with cognac, added his entreaties to those
of the mate and steward.  In the small boat Conyngham, in French,
and the lady's daughter, in Spanish, represented that at least half
of the heavenly host, having intervened to save her from so great a
peril as that safely passed through, could surely accomplish this
smaller feat with ease.  But the lady still hesitated, and the mate,
having clambered down into the boat, grabbed Conyngham's arm with a
large and not unkindly hand, and pushed him forcibly towards the
ladder.

'You hadn't got no business, Mr. Conyngham,' he said gruffly, 'to
leave the ship like that, and like as not you've got your death of
cold.  Just you get aboard and leave these women to me.  You get to
your bunk, mister, and stooard'll bring you something hot.'

There was nought but obedience in the matter, and Conyngham was soon
between the blankets, alternately shivering and burning in the first
stages of a severe chill.

The captain having come on board, the 'Granville' presently weighed
anchor, and on the bosom of an ebbing tide turned her blunt prow
towards the winter sea.  The waves out there beat high, and before
the lights of Pauillac, then a mere cluster of fishers' huts, had
passed away astern, the good ship was lifting her bow with a sense
of anticipation, while her great wooden beams and knees began to
strain and creak.

During the following days, while the sense of spring and warmth
slowly gave life to those who could breathe the air on deck,
Conyngham lay in his little cabin and heeded nothing; for when the
fever left him he was only conscious of a great lassitude, and
scarce could raise himself to take such nourishment as the steward,
with a rough but kindly skill, prepared for him.

'Why the deuce I ever came--why the deuce I ever went overboard
after a couple of senoras--I don't know,' he repeated to himself
during the hours of that long watch below.

Why, indeed? except that youth must needs go forth into the world
and play the only stake it owns there.  Nor is Frederick Conyngham
the first who, having no knowledge of the game of life, throws all
upon the board to wait upon the hazard of a die.



CHAPTER IV.  LE PREMIER PAS.



'Be as one that knoweth and yet holdeth his tongue.'

The little town of Algeciras lies, as many know, within sight of
Gibraltar, and separated from that stronghold by a broad bay.  It is
on the mainland of Spain, and in direct communication by road with
the great port of Cadiz.  Another road, little better than a bridle-
path, runs northward to Ximena and through the corkwood forests of
that plain towards the mountain ranges that rise between Ronda and
the sea.

By this bridle-path, it is whispered, a vast smuggled commerce has
ever found passage to the mainland, and scarce a boatman or
passenger lands at Algeciras from Gibraltar but carries somewhere on
his person as much tobacco as he may hope to conceal with safety.
Algeciras, with its fair white houses, its prim church, and sleepy
quay, where the blue waters lap and sparkle in innocent sunlight,
is, it is to be feared, a town of small virtue and the habitation of
scoundrels.  For this is the stronghold of those contrabandistas
whom song and legend have praised as the boldest, the merriest, and
most romantic of law-breakers.  Indeed, in this country the man who
can boast of a smuggling ancestry holds high his head and looks down
on honest folk.

The 'Granville' having dropped anchor to the north of the rough
stone pier, was soon disburdened of her passengers--the ladies going
ashore with undisguised delight, and leaving behind them many
gracious messages of thanks to the gentleman whose gallantry had
resulted so disastrously; for Conyngham was still in bed, though now
nearly recovered.  Truth to tell, he did not hurry to make his
appearance in the general cabin, and came on deck a few hours after
the departure of the ladies, whose gratitude he desired to avoid.

Two days of the peerless sunshine of these southern waters
completely restored him to health, and he prepared to go ashore.  It
was afternoon when his boat touched the beach, and the idlers,
without whom no Mediterranean seaboard is complete, having passed
the heat of the day in a philosophic apathy amounting in many cases
to a siesta, now roused themselves sufficiently to take a dignified
and indifferent interest in the new arrival.  A number of boys, an
old soldier, several artillerymen from the pretty and absolutely
useless fort, a priest and a female vendor of oranges put themselves
out so much as to congregate in a little knot at the spot where
Conyngham landed.

'Body of Bacchus!' said the priest, with a pinch of snuff poised
before his long nose, 'an Englishman--see his gold watch chain.'

This remark called forth several monosyllabic sounds, and the
onlookers watched the safe discharge of Conyngham's personal effects
with a characteristic placidity of demeanour which was at once
tolerant and gently surprised.  That any one should have the energy
to come ashore when he was comfortable on board, or leave the shore
when amply provided there with sunshine, elbowroom, and other
necessaries of life, presented itself to them as a fact worthy of
note but not of emulation.  The happiest man is he who has reduced
the necessities of life to a minimum.

No one offered to assist Conyngham.  In Spain the onlooker keeps his
hands in his pockets.

'The English, see you, travel for pleasure,' said the old soldier,
nodding his head in the direction of Gibraltar, pink and shimmering
across the bay.

The priest brushed some stray grains of snuff from the front of his
faded cassock--once black, but now of a greeny brown.  He was a
singularly tall man, gaunt and grey, with deep lines drawn downwards
from eye to chin.  His mouth was large and tender, with a humorous
corner ever awaiting a jest.  His eyes were sombre and deeply shaded
by grey brows, but one of them had a twinkle lurking and waiting, as
in the corner of his mouth.

'Everyone stretches his legs according to the length of his
coverlet,' he said, and, turning, he courteously raised his hat to
Conyngham, who passed at that moment on his way to the hotel.  The
little knot of onlookers broke up, and the boys wandered towards the
fort, before the gate of which a game at bowls was in progress.

'The Padre has a hungry look,' reflected Conyngham.  'Think I'll
invite him to dinner.'

For Geoffrey Horner had succeeded in conveying more money to the man
who had taken his sins upon himself, and while Conyngham possessed
money he usually had the desire to spend it.

Conyngham went to the Fonda de la Marina, which stands to-day--a
house of small comfort and no great outward cleanliness; but, as in
most Spanish inns, the performance was better than the promise, and
the bedroom offered to the traveller was nothing worse than bare and
ill furnished.  With what Spanish he at this time possessed the
Englishman made known his wants, and inquired of the means of
prosecuting his journey to Ronda.

'You know the Captain-General Vincente of Ronda?' he asked.

'But. . . yes--by reputation.  Who does not in Andalusia?' replied
the host, a stout man, who had once cooked for a military mess at
Gibraltar, and professed himself acquainted with the requirements of
English gentlemen.

'I have a letter to General Vincente, and must go to Ronda as soon
as possible.  These are stirring times in Spain.'

The man's bland face suddenly assumed an air of cunning, and he
glanced over his shoulder to see that none overheard.

'Your Excellency is right,' he answered.  'But for such as myself
one side is as good as another--is it not so?  Carlist or Christino-
-the money is the same.'

'But here in the South there are no Carlists.'

'Who knows?' said the innkeeper with outspread hands.  'Anything
that his Excellency requires shall be forthcoming,' he added
grandiosely.  'This is the dining-room, and here at the side a
little saloon where the ladies sit.  But at present we have only
gentlemen in the hotel--it being the winter time.'

'Then you have other guests?' inquired Conyngham.

'But. . . yes--always.  In Algeciras there are always travellers.
Noblemen--like his Excellency--for pleasure.  Others--for commerce,
the Government--the politics.'

'No flies enter a shut mouth, my friend,' said a voice at the door,
and both turned to see standing in the doorway the priest who had
witnessed Conyngham's arrival.

'Pardon, senor,' said the old man, coming forward with his shabby
hat in his hand.  'Pardon my interruption.  I came at an opportune
moment, for I heard the word politics.'

He turned and shook a lean finger at the innkeeper, who was backing
towards the door with many bows.

'Ah, bad Miguel,' he said, 'will you make it impossible for
gentlemen to put up at your execrable inn?  The man's cooking is
superior to his discretion, senor.  I, too, am a traveller, and for
the moment a guest here.  I have the honour.  My name is Concha--the
Padre Concha--a priest, as you see.'

Conyngham nodded, and laughed frankly.

'Glad to meet you,' he said.  'I saw you as I came along.  My name
is Conyngham, and I am an Englishman, as you hear.  I know very
little Spanish.'

'That will come--that will come,' said the priest, moving towards
the window.  'Perhaps too soon, if you are going to stay any length
of time in this country.  Let me advise you--do not learn our
language too quickly.'

He shook his head and moved towards the open window.

'See to your girths before you mount, eh?  Here is the verandah,
where it is pleasant in the afternoon.  Shall we be seated?  That
chair has but three legs--allow me! this one is better.'

He spoke with the grave courtesy of his countrymen.  For every
Spaniard, even the lowest muleteer, esteems himself a gentleman, and
knows how to act as such.  The Padre Concha had a pleasant voice,
and a habit of gesticulating slowly with one large and not too clean
hand, that suggested the pulpit.  He had led the way to a spacious
verandah, where there were small tables and chairs, and at the outer
corners orange trees in square green boxes.

'We will have a bottle of wine--is it not so?--yes,' he said, and
gravely clapped his hands together to summon the waiter--an Oriental
custom still in use in the Peninsula.

The wine was brought and duly uncorked, during which ceremony the
priest waited and watched with the preoccupied air of a host careful
for the entertainment of his guest.  He tasted the wine critically.

'It might be worse,' he said.  'I beg you to excuse it not being
better.'

There was something simple in the old man's manner that won
Conyngham's regard.

'The wine is excellent,' he said.  'It is my welcome to Spain.'

'Ah!  Then this is your first visit to this country,' the priest
said indifferently, his eyes wandering to the open sea, where a few
feluccas lay becalmed.

'Yes.'

Conyngham turned and looked towards the sea also.  It was late in
the afternoon, and a certain drowsiness of the atmosphere made
conversation, even between comparative strangers, a slower, easier
matter than with us in the brisk North.  After a moment the
Englishman turned with, perhaps, the intention of studying his
companion's face, only to find the deep grey eyes fixed on his own.

'Spain,' said the Padre, 'is a wonderful country, rich, beautiful,
with a climate like none in Europe; but God and the devil come to
closer quarters here than elsewhere.  Still for a traveller, for
pleasure, I think this country is second to none.'

'I am not exactly a traveller for pleasure, my father.'

'Ah!' and Concha drummed idly on the table with his fingers.

'I left England in haste,' added Conyngham lightly.

'Ah!'

'And it will be inexpedient for me to return for some months to
come.  I thought of taking service in the army, and have a letter to
General Vincente, who lives at Ronda, as I understand, sixty miles
from here across the mountains.'

'Yes,' said the priest thoughtfully, 'Ronda is sixty miles from
here--across the mountains.'

He was watching a boat which approached the shore from the direction
of Gibraltar.  The wind having dropped, the boatmen had lowered the
sail and were now rowing, giving voice to a song which floated
across the smooth sea sleepily.  It was an ordinary Algeciras wherry
built to carry a little cargo, and perhaps a dozen passengers, a
fishing boat that smelt strongly of tobacco.  The shore was soon
reached, and the passengers, numbering half a dozen, stepped over
the gunwale on to a small landing stage.  One of them was better
dressed than his companions, a smart man with a bright flower in the
buttonhole of his jacket, carrying the flowing cloak brightly lined
with coloured velvet without which no Spaniard goes abroad at
sunset.  He looked towards the hotel, and was evidently speaking of
it with a boatman whose attitude was full of promise and assurance.

The priest rose and emptied his glass.

'I must ask you to excuse me.  Vespers wait for no man, and I hear
the bell,' he said with a grave bow, and went indoors.

Left to himself, Conyngham lapsed into the easy reflections of a man
whose habit it is to live for the present, leaving the future and
the past to take care of themselves.  Perhaps he thought, as some
do, that the past dies--which is a mistake.  The past only sleeps,
and we carry it with us through life, slumbering.  Those are wise
who bear it gently so that it may never be aroused.

The sun had set, and Gibraltar, a huge couchant lion across the bay,
was fading into the twilight of the East when a footstep in the
dining-room made Conyngham turn his head, half expecting the return
of Father Concha.  But in the doorway, and with the evident
intention of coming towards himself, Conyngham perceived a handsome
dark-faced man of medium height, with a smart moustache brushed
upward, clever eyes, and the carriage of a soldier.  This stranger
unfolded his cloak, for in Spain it is considered ill-mannered to
address a stranger and remain cloaked.

'Senor,' he said, with a gesture of the hat, courteous and yet manly
enough to savour more of the camp than the court, 'senor, I
understand you are journeying to Ronda.'

'Yes.'

'I, too, intended to go across the mountains, and hoped to arrive
here in time to accompany friends who I learn have already started
on their journey.  But I have received letters which necessitate my
return to Malaga.  You have already divined that I come to ask a
favour.'

He brought forward a chair and sat down, drawing from his pocket a
silver cigarette case, which he offered to the Englishman.  There
was a certain picturesqueness in the man's attitude and manner.  His
face and movements possessed a suggestion of energy which seemed out
of place here in the sleepy South, and stamped him as a native not
of dreamy Andalusia, but of La Mancha perhaps, where the wit of
Spain is concentrated, or of fiery Catalonia, where discontent and
unrest are in the very atmosphere of the brown hills.  This was a
Spanish gentleman in the best sense of the word, as scrupulous in
personal cleanliness as any Englishman, polished, accomplished,
bright and fascinating, and yet carrying with him a subtle air of
melancholy and romance which lingers still among the men and women
of aristocratic Spain.

''Tis but to carry a letter,' he explained, 'and to deliver it into
the hand of the person to whom it is addressed.  Ah, I would give
five years of life to touch that hand with my lips.'

He sighed, gave a little laugh which was full of meaning, and yet
quite free from self-consciousness, and lighted a fresh cigarette.
Then, after a little pause, he produced the letter from an inner
pocket and laid it on the table in front of Conyngham.  It was
addressed, 'To the Senorita J. B.,' and had a subtle scent of
mignonette.  The envelope was of a delicate pink.

'A love letter,' said Conyngham bluntly.

The Spaniard looked at him and shrugged his shoulders.

'Ah! you do not understand,' he said, 'in that cold country of the
North.  If you stay in Spain, perhaps some dark-eyed one will teach
you.  But,' and his manner changed with theatrical rapidity, as he
laid his slim hand on the letter, 'if, when you see her you love
her, I will kill you.'

Conyngham laughed and held out his hand for the letter.

'It is insufficiently addressed,' he said practically.  'How shall I
find the lady?'

'Her name is Barenna, the Senorita Barenna; that is sufficient in
Ronda.'

Conyngham took up the letter and examined it.  'It is of
importance?' he said.

'Of the utmost.'

'And of value?'

'Of the greatest value in the world to me.'

The Spaniard rose and took up his cloak, which he had thrown over
the back of the nearest chair, not forgetting to display a
picturesque corner of its bright lining.

'You swear you will deliver it, only with your own hand, only to the
hand of the Senorita Barenna?  And--you will observe the strictest
secrecy?'

'Oh, yes,' answered Conyngham carelessly, 'if you like.'

The Spaniard turned, and, leaning one hand on the table, looked
almost fiercely into his companion's face.  'You are an Englishman,'
he said, 'and an Englishman's word--is it not known all the world
over?  In the North, in my country, where Wellington fought, the
peasants still say "word of an Englishman" instead of an oath.'

He threw his cloak over his shoulder, and stood looking down at his
companion with a little smile as if he were proud of him.

'There!' he said.  'Adios.  My name is Larralde, but that is of no
consequence.  Adios!'

With a courteous bow he took his leave, and Conyngham presently saw
him walking down to the landing stage.  It seemed that this strange
visitor was about to depart as abruptly as he had come.  Conyngham
rose and walked to the edge of the verandah, where he stood watching
the departure of the boat in which his new friend had taken passage.

While he was standing there, the old priest came quietly out of the
open window of the dining room.  He saw the letter lying on the
table where Conyngham had left it.  He approached, his shabby old
shoes making no sound on the wooden flooring, and read the address
written on the pink and scented envelope.  When the Englishman at
length turned, he was alone on the verandah, with the wine bottle,
the empty glasses, and the letter.



CHAPTER V.  CONTRABAND.



'What rights are his that dares not strike for them?'

An hour before sunrise two horses stood shuffling their feet and
chewing their bits before the hotel of the Marina at Algeciras,
while their owner, a short and thick-set man of an exaggeratedly
villanous appearance, attended to such straps and buckles as he
suspected of latent flaws.  The horses were lean and loose of ear,
with a melancholy thoughtfulness of demeanour that seemed to suggest
the deepest misgivings as to the future.  Their saddles and other
accoutrements were frankly theatrical, and would have been at once
the delight of an artist and the despair of a saddler.  Fringes and
tassels of bright-coloured worsted depended from points where
fringes and tassels were distinctly out of place.  Where the various
straps should have been strong they looked weak, and scarce a buckle
could boast an innocence of knotted string.  The saddles were of
wood, and calculated to inflict serious internal injuries to the
rider in case of a fall.  They stood at least a foot above the
horse's backbone, raised on a thick cushion upon the ribs of the
animal, and leaving a space in the middle for the secretion of
tobacco and other contraband merchandise.

'I'll take the smallest cut-throat of the crew,' Conyngham had said
on the occasion of an informal parade of guides the previous
evening.  And the host of the Fonda, in whose kitchen the function
had taken place, explained to Concepcion Vara that the English
Excellency had selected him on his--the host's--assurance that
Algeciras contained no other so honest.

'Tell him,' answered Concepcion with a cigarette between his lips
and a pardonable pride in his eyes, 'that my grandfather was a
smuggler and my father was shot by the Guardia Civil near
Algatocin.'

Concepcion, having repaired one girth and shaken his head dubiously
over another, lighted a fresh cigarette and gave a little shiver,
for the morning air was keen.  He discreetly coughed.  He had seen
Conyngham breakfasting by the light of a dim oil lamp of a shape and
make unaltered since the days of Nebuchadnezzar, and, without
appearing impatient, wished to convey to one gentleman the fact that
another awaited him.

Before long Conyngham appeared, having paid an iniquitous bill with
the recklessness that is only thoroughly understood by the poor.  He
appeared as usual to be at peace with all men, and returned his
guide's grave salutation with an easy nod.

'These the horses?' he inquired.

Concepcion Vara spread out his hands.  'They have no equal in
Andalusia,' he said.

'Then I am sorry for Andalusia,' answered Conyngham with a pleasant
laugh.

They mounted and rode away in the dim cool light of the morning.
The sea was of a deep blue, and rippled all over as in a picture.
Gibraltar, five miles away, loomed up like a grey cloud against the
pink of sunrise.  The whole world wore a cleanly look as if the
night had been passed over its face like a sponge, wiping away all
that was unsightly or evil.  The air was light and exhilarating, and
scented by the breath of aromatic weeds growing at the roadside.

Concepcion sang a song as he rode--a song almost as old as his
trade--declaring that he was a smuggler bold.  And he looked it,
every inch.  The road to Ronda lies through the cork woods of
Ximena, leaving St. Roque on the right hand--such at least was the
path selected by Conyngham's guide; for there are many ways over the
mountains, and none of them to be recommended.  Beguiling the
journey with cigarette and song, calling at every venta on the road,
exchanging chaff with every woman and a quick word with all men,
Concepcion faithfully fulfilled his contract, and, as the moon rose
over the distant snow-clad peaks of the Sierra Nevada, pointed
forward to the lights of Gaucin, a mountain village with an evil
reputation.

The dawn of the next day saw the travellers in the saddle again, and
the road was worse than ever.  A sharp ascent led them up from
Gaucin to regions where foliage grew scarcer at every step, and
cultivation was unknown.  At one spot they turned to look back, and
saw Gibraltar like a tooth protruding from the sea.  The straits had
the appearance of a river, and the high land behind Ceuta formed the
farther bank of it.

'There is Africa,' said Concepcion gravely, and after a moment
turned his horse's head uphill again.  The people of these mountain
regions were as wild in appearance as their country.  Once or twice
the travellers passed a shepherd herding sheep or goats on the
mountain side, himself clad in goatskin, with a great brown cloak
floating from his shoulders--a living picture of Ishmael or those
sons of his who dwelt in the tents of Kedar.  A few muleteers drew
aside to let the horses pass, and exchanged some words in an
undertone with Conyngham's guide.  Fine-looking brigands were these,
with an armoury of knives peeping from their bright-coloured
waistbands.  The Andalusian peasant is for six days in the week
calculated to inspire awe by his clothing and general appearance.
Of a dark skin and hair, he usually submits his chin to the barber's
office but once a week, and the timid traveller would do well to
take the road on Sundays only.  Towards the end of the week, and
notably on a Saturday, every passer-by is an unshorn brigand capable
of the darkest deeds of villany, while twenty-four hours later the
land will be found to be peopled by as clean and honest and smart,
and withal as handsome, a race of men as any on earth.

Before long all habitations were left behind, and the horses climbed
from rock to rock like cats.  There was no suggestion of pathway or
landmark, and Concepcion paused once or twice to take his bearings.
It was about two in the afternoon when, after descending the bed of
a stream long since dried up, Concepcion called a halt, and proposed
to rest the horses while he dined.  As on the previous day, the
guide's manner was that of a gentleman, conferring a high honour
with becoming modesty when he sat down beside Conyngham and untied
his small sack of provisions.  These consisted of dried figs and
bread, which he offered to his companion before beginning to eat.
Conyngham shared his own stock of food with his guide, and
subsequently smoked a cigarette which that gentleman offered him.
They were thus pleasantly engaged when a man appeared on the rocks
above them in a manner and with a haste that spoke but ill of his
honesty.  The guide looked up knife in hand, and made answer to a
gesture of the arm with his own hand upraised.

'Who is this?' said Conyngham.  'Some friend of yours?  Tell him to
keep his distance, for I don't care for his appearance.'

'He is no friend of mine, Excellency.  But the man is, I dare say,
honest enough.  In these mountains it is only of the Guardia Civil
that one must beware.  They have ever the finger on the trigger and
shoot without warning.'

'Nevertheless,' said the Englishman, now thoroughly on the alert,
'let him state his business at a respectable distance.  Ah! he has a
comrade and two mules.'

And indeed a second man of equally unprepossessing exterior now
appeared from behind a great rock leading a couple of heavily laden
mules.

Concepcion and the first traveller, who was now within a dozen
yards, were already exchanging words in a patois not unlike the
Limousin dialect, of which Conyngham understood nothing.

'Stop where you are,' shouted the Englishman in Spanish, 'or else I
shoot you!  If there is anything wrong, Senor Vara,' he added to the
guide, 'I shoot you first, understand that.'

'He says,' answered Concepcion with dignity, 'that they are honest
traders on the road to Ronda, and would be glad of our company.  His
Excellency is at liberty to shoot if he is so disposed.'

Conyngham laughed.

'No,' he answered, 'I am not anxious to kill any man, but each must
take care of himself in these times.'

'Not against an honest smuggler.'

'Are these smugglers?'

'They speak as such.  I know them no more than does his Excellency.'

The second new-comer was now within hail, and began at once to speak
in Spanish.  The tale he told was similar in every way to that
translated by Concepcion from the Limousin dialect.

'Why should we not travel together to Ronda?' he said, coming
forward with an easy air of confidence, which was of better effect
than any protestation of honesty.  He had a quiet eye, and the
demeanour of one educated to loftier things than smuggling tobacco
across the Sierra, though indeed, he was no better clad than his
companion.  The two guides instinctively took the road together,
Concepcion leading his horse, for the way was such that none could
ride over it.  Conyngham did the same, and his companion led the
mule by a rope, as is the custom in Andalusia.

The full glare of the day shone down on them, the bare rock giving
back a puff of heat that dried the throat.  Conyngham was tired and
not too trustful of his companion, who, indeed, seemed to be fully
occupied with his own thoughts.  They had thus progressed a full
half-hour when a shout from the rocks above caused them to halt
suddenly.  The white linen head coverings of the Guardia Civil and
the glint of the sun on their accoutrements showed at a glance that
this was not a summons to be disregarded.

In an instant Concepcion's companion was leaping from rock to rock
with an agility only to be acquired in the hot fear of death.  A
report rang out and echoed among the hills.  A bullet went 'splat'
against a rock near at hand, making a frayed blue mark upon the grey
stone.  The man dodged from side to side in the panic-stricken
irresponsibility of a rabbit seeking covert where none exists.
There was not so much as to hide his head.  Conyngham looked up
towards the foe in time to see a puff of white smoke thrown up
against the steely sky.  A second report, and the fugitive seemed to
trip over a stone.  He recovered himself, stood upright for a
moment, gave a queer spluttering cough, and sat slowly down against
a boulder.

'He is killed!' said Concepcion, throwing down his cigarette.
'Mother of God! these Guardias Civiles!'

The two guards came clambering down the face of the rock.
Concepcion glanced at his late companion writhing in the sharpness
of death.

'Here or at Ronda, to-day, or to-morrow, what matters it?' muttered
the quiet-eyed man at Conyngham's side.  The Englishman turned and
looked at him.

'They will shoot me too, but not now.'

Concepcion sullenly awaited the arrival of the guards.  These men
ever hunt in couples of a widely different age, for the law has
found that an old head and a young arm form the strongest
combination.  The elder of the two had the face of an old grey wolf.
He muttered some order to his companion, and went towards the mule.
He cut away the outer covering of the burden suspended from the
saddle, and nodded his head wisely.  These were boxes of cartridges
to carry one thousand each.  The grey old man turned and looked at
him who lay on the ground.

'A la longa,' he said with a grim smile.  'In the long run,
Antonio.'

The man gave a sickly grin and opened his mouth to speak, but his
jaw dropped instead, and he passed across that frontier which is
watched by no earthly sentinel.

'This gentleman,' said the quiet-eyed man, whose guide had thus paid
for his little mistake in refusing to halt at the word of command,
'is a stranger to me--an Englishman, I think.'

'Yes,' answered Conyngham.

The old soldier looked from one to the other.

'That may be,' he said, 'but he sleeps in Ronda prison to-night.
To-morrow the Captain-General will see to it.'

'I have a letter to the Captain-General,' said Conyngham, who drew
from his pocket a packet of papers.  Among these was the pink
scented envelope given to him by the man called Larralde at
Algeciras.  He had forgotten its existence, and put it back in his
pocket with a smile.  Having found that for which he sought, he gave
it to the soldier, who read the address in silence and returned the
letter.

'You I know,' he said, turning to the man at Conyngham's side, who
merely shrugged his shoulders.  'And Concepcion Vara, we all know
him.'

Concepcion had lighted a cigarette, and was murmuring a popular air
with the indifferent patience and the wandering eye of perfect
innocence.  The old soldier turned and spoke in an undertone to his
comrade, who went towards the dead man and quietly covered his face
with the folds of his own faja or waistcloth.  This he weighted at
the corners with stones, carrying out this simple office to the dead
with a suggestive indifference.  To this day the Guardias Civiles
have plenary power to shoot whomsoever they think fit--flight and
resistance being equally fatal.

No more heeding the dead body of the man whom he had shot than he
would have heeded the carcase of a rat, the elder of the two
soldiers now gave the order to march, commanding Concepcion to lead
the way.

'It will not be worth your while to risk a bullet by running away,'
he said.  'This time it is probably a matter of a few pounds of
tobacco only.'

The evening had fallen ere the silent party caught sight of the town
of Ronda, perched, as the Moorish strongholds usually are, on a
height.  Ronda, as history tells, was the last possession of the
brave and gifted Moslems in Spain.  The people are half Moorish
still, and from the barred windows look out deep almond eyes and
patient faces that have no European feature.  The narrow streets
were empty as the travellers entered the town, and the clatter of
the mules slipping and stumbling on the cobble stones brought but
few to the doors of the low-built houses.  To enter Ronda from the
south the traveller must traverse the Moorish town, which is divided
from the Spanish quarter by a cleft in the great rock that renders
the town impregnable to all attack.  Having crossed the bridge
spanning the great gorge into which the sun never penetrates even at
midday, the party emerged into the broader streets of the more
modern town, and, turning to the right through a high gateway, found
themselves in a barrack yard of the Guardias Civiles.



CHAPTER VI.  AT RONDA.



'Le plus grand art d'un habile homme est celui de savoir cacher son
habilete.'

When Conyngham awoke after a night conscientiously spent in that
profound slumber which waits on an excellent digestion and a
careless heart, he found the prison attendant at his bedside.  A
less easy-going mind would perhaps have leapt to some nervous
conclusion at the sight of this fierce-visaged janitor, who,
however, carried nothing more deadly in his hand than a card.

'It is the Captain-General,' said he, 'who calls at this early hour.
His Excellency's letter has been delivered, and the Captain-General
scarce waited to swallow his morning chocolate.'

'Very much to the Captain-General's credit,' returned Conyngham
rising.  'Cold water,' he went on, 'soap, a towel, and my luggage--
and then the Captain-General.'

The attendant, with an odd smile, procured the necessary articles,
and when the Englishman was ready led the way downstairs.  He was a
solemn man from Galicia, this, where they do not smile.

In the patio of the great house, once a monastery, now converted
into a barrack for the Guardias Civiles, a small man of fifty years
or more stood smoking a cigarette.  On perceiving Conyngham he came
forward with outstretched hand and a smile which can only be
described as angelic.  It was a smile at once sympathetic and
humorous, veiling his dark eyes between lashes almost closed,
parting moustached lips to disclose a row of pearly teeth.

'My dear sir,' said General Vincente in very tolerable English, 'I
am at your feet.  That such a mistake should have been made in
respect to the bearer of a letter of introduction from my old friend
General Watterson--we fought together in Wellington's day--that such
a mistake should have occurred overwhelms me with shame.'

He pressed Conyngham's hand in both of his, which were small and
white--looked up into his face, stepped back and broke into a soft
laugh.  Indeed his voice was admirably suited to a lady's drawing-
room, and suggested nought of the camp or battle field.  From the
handkerchief which he drew from his sleeve and passed across his
white moustache a faint scent floated on the morning air.

'Are you General Vincente?' asked Conyngham.

'Yes--why not?'  And in truth the tone of the Englishman's voice had
betrayed a scepticism which warranted the question.

'It is very kind of you to come so early.  I have been quite
comfortable, and they gave me a good supper last night,' said
Conyngham.  'Moreover, the Guardias Civiles are in no way to blame
for my arrest.  I was in bad company, it seems.'

'Yes; your companions were engaged in conveying ammunition to the
Carlists; we have wanted to lay our hands upon them for some weeks.
They have carried former journeys to a successful termination.'

He laughed and shrugged his shoulders.

'The guide, Antonio something-or-other, died, as I understand.'

'Well, yes; if you choose to put it that way,' admitted Conyngham.

The General raised his eyebrows in a gentle grimace expressive of
deprecation, with, as it were, a small solution of sympathy,
indicated by a moisture of the eye, for the family of Antonio
something-or-other in their bereavement.

'And the other man?  Seemed a nice enough fellow. . .' inquired
Conyngham.

The General raised one gloved hand as if to fend off some
approaching calamity.

'He died this morning--at six o'clock.'

Conyngham looked down at this gentle soldier with a dawning light of
comprehension.  This might after all be the General Vincente whom he
had been led to look upon as the fiercest of the Spanish Queen's
adherents.

'Of the same complaint?'

'Of the same complaint,' answered the General softly.  He slipped
his hand within Conyngham's arm, and thus affectionately led him
across the patio towards the doorway where sentinels stood at
attention.  He acknowledged the attitude of his subordinates by a
friendly nod; indeed, this rosy-faced warrior seemed to brim over
with the milk of human kindness.

'The English,' he said, pressing his companion's arm, 'have been too
useful to us for me to allow one of them to remain a moment longer
in confinement.  You say you were comfortable.  I hope they gave you
a clean towel and all that.'

'Yes, thanks,' answered Conyngham, suppressing a desire to laugh.

'That is well.  Ronda is a pleasant place, as you will find.  Most
interesting--Moorish remains, you understand.  I will send my
servant for your baggage, and of course my poor house is at your
disposal.  You will stay with me until we can find some work for you
to do.  You wish to take service with us, of course?'

'Yes,' answered Conynghamn.  'Rather thought of it--if you will have
me.'

The General glanced up at his stalwart companion with a measuring
eye.

'My house,' he said, in a conversational way, as if only desirous of
making matters as pleasant as possible in a life which nature had
intended to be peaceful and sunny, and perhaps trifling, but which
the wickedness of men had rendered otherwise, 'my house is, as you
would divine, only an official residence, but pleasant enough--
pleasant enough.  The garden is distinctly tolerable; there are
orange trees now in bloom--so sweet of scent.'

The street into which they had now emerged was no less martial in
appearance than the barrack yard, and while he spoke the General
never ceased to dispense his kindly little nod on one side or the
other in response to military salutations.

'We have quite a number of soldiers in Ronda at present,' he said,
with an affectionate little pressure of Conyngham's arm, as if to
indicate his appreciation of such protection amid these rough men.
'There is a great talk of some rising in the South--in Andalusia--to
support Senor Cabrera, who continually threatens Madrid.  A great
soldier, they tell me, this Cabrera, but not--well, not perhaps
quite, eh?--a caballero, a gentleman.  A pity, is it not?'

'A great pity,' answered Conyngham, taking the opportunity at last
afforded him of getting a word in.

'One must be prepared,' went on the General with a good-natured
little sigh, 'for such measures.  There are so many mistaken
enthusiasts--is it not so?  Such men as your countryman, Senor
Flinter.  There are so many who are stronger Carlists than Don
Carlos himself, eh?'

The secret of conversational success is to defer to one's listener.
A clever man imparts information by asking questions, and obtains it
without doing so.

'This is my poor house,' continued the soldier, and as he spoke he
beamed on the sentries at the door.  'I am a widower, but God has
given me a daughter who is now of an age to rule my household.
Estella will endeavour to make you comfortable, and an Englishman--a
soldier--will surely overlook some small defects.'

He finished with a good-natured laugh.  There was no resisting the
sunny good-humour of this little officer, or the gladness of his
face.  His attitude towards the world was one of constant endeavour
to make things pleasant, and acquit himself to his best in
circumstances far beyond his merits or capabilities.  He was one who
had had good fortune all his days.  Those who have greatness thrust
upon them are never much impressed by their burden.  And General
Vincente had the air of constantly assuring his subordinates that
they need not mind him.

The house to which he conducted Conyngham stood on the broad main
street, immediately opposite a cluster of shops where leather
bottles were manufactured and sold.  It was a large gloomy house
with a patio devoid of fountain and even of the usual orange trees
in green boxes.

'Through there is the garden--most pleasant and shady,' said the
General, indicating a doorway with the riding-whip he carried.

A troop of servants awaited them at the foot of the broad Moorish
staircase open on one side to the patio and heavily carved in
balustrade and cornice.  These gentlemen bowed gravely--indeed, they
were so numerous that the majority of them must have had nothing to
do but cultivate this dignified salutation.

'The senorita?' inquired the General.

'The senorita is in the garden, Excellency,' answered one with the
air of a courtier.

'Then let us go there at once,' said General Vincente, turning to
Conyngham, and gripping his arm affectionately.

They passed through a doorway whither two men had hurried to open
the heavy doors, and the scent of violets and mignonette, of orange
in bloom, and of a hundred opening buds swept across their faces.
The brilliant sunlight almost dazzled eyes that had grown accustomed
to the cool shade of the patio, for Ronda is one of the sunniest
spots on earth, and here the warmth is rarely oppressive.  The
garden was Moorish, and running water in aqueducts of marble, yellow
with stupendous age, murmured in the shade of tropical plants.  A
fountain plashed and chattered softly, like the whispering of
children.  The pathways were paved with a fine white gravel of
broken marble.  There was no weed amid the flowers.  It seemed a
paradise to Conyngham, fresh from the grey and mournful northern
winter, and no part of this weary, busy world.  For here were rest
and silence, and that sense of eternity which is only conveyed by
the continuous voice of running or falling water.  It was hard to
believe that this was real and earthly.  Conyngham rubbed his eyes
and instinctively turned to look at his companion, who was as unreal
as his surroundings--a round-faced, chubby little man, with a tender
mouth and moist dark eyes looking kindly out upon the world, who
called himself General Vincente; and the name was synonymous in all
Spain with bloodthirstiness and cruelty, with daring and an
unsparing generalship.

'Come,' said he, 'let us look for Estella.'

He led the way along a path winding among almond and peach trees in
full bloom, in the shadow of the weird eucalyptus and the feathery
pepper tree.  Then with a little word of pleasure he hurried
forward.  Conyngham caught sight of a black dress and a black
mantilla, of fair golden hair, and a fan upraised against the rays
of the sun.

'Estella, here is a guest:  Mr. Conyngham, one of the brave
Englishmen who remember Spain in her time of trouble.'

Conyngham bowed with a greater ceremony than we observe to-day, and
stood upright to look upon that which was for him from that moment
the fairest face in the world.  As, to some men, success or failure
seems to come early and in one bound, so, for some, Love lies long
in ambush, to shoot at length a single and certain shaft.  Conyngham
looked at Estella Vincente, his gay blue eyes meeting her dark
glance with a frankness which was characteristic, and knew from that
instant that his world held no other woman.  It came to him as a
flash of lightning that left his former life grey and neutral, and
yet he was conscious of no surprise, but rather of a feeling of
having found something which he had long sought.

The girl acknowledged his salutation with a little inclination of
the head and a smile which was only of the lips, for her eyes
remained grave and deep.  She had all the dignity of carriage famous
in Castilian women, though her figure was youthful still, and
slight.  Her face was a clean-cut oval, with lips that were still
and proud, and a delicately aquiline nose.

'My daughter speaks English better than I do,' went on the General
in the garrulous voice of an exceedingly domesticated man.  'She has
been at school in England--at the suggestion of my dear friend
Watterson--with his daughters, in fact.'

'And must have found it dull and grey enough compared with Spain,'
said Conyngham.

'Ah!  Then you like Spain?' said the General eagerly.  'It is so
with all the English.  We have something in common, despite the
Armada, eh?  Something in manner and in appearance, too; is it not
so?'

He left Conyngham, and walked slowly on with one hand at his
daughter's waist.

'I was very happy in England,' said Estella to Conyngham, who walked
at her other side; 'but happier still to get home to Spain.'

Her voice was rather low, and Conyngham had an odd sensation of
having heard it before.

'Why did you leave your home?' she continued in a leisurely
conversational way which seemed natural to the environments.

The question rather startled the Englishman, for the only answer
seemed to be that he had quitted England in order to come to Ronda
and to her, following the path in life that fate had assigned to
him.

'We have troubles in England also--political troubles,' he said,
after a pause.

'The Chartists,' said the General cheerfully.  'We know all about
them, for we have the English newspapers.  I procure them in order
to have reliable news of Spain.'

He broke off with a little laugh, and looked towards his daughter.

'In the evening Estella reads them to me.  And it was on account of
the Chartists that you left England?'

'Yes.'

'Ah, you are a Chartist, Mr. Conyngham.'

'Yes,' admitted the Englishman after a pause, and he glanced at
Estella.



CHAPTER VII.  IN A MOORISH GARDEN.



'When love is not a blasphemy, it is a religion.'

There is perhaps a subtle significance in the fact that the
greatest, the cruellest, the most barbarous civil war of modern
days, if not of all time, owed its outbreak and its long continuance
to the influence of a woman.  When Ferdinand VII. of Spain died, in
1833, after a reign broken and disturbed by the passage of that
human cyclone, Napoleon the Great, he bequeathed his kingdom, in
defiance of the Salic law, to his daughter Isabella.  Ferdinand's
brother Charles, however, claimed the throne under the very just
contention that the Salic law, by which women were excluded from the
heritage of the crown, had never been legally abrogated.

This was the spark that kindled in many minds ambition, cruelty,
bloodthirstiness, self-seeking and jealousy--producing the morale,
in a word, of the Spain of sixty years ago.  Some sided with the
Queen Regent Christina, and rallied round the child-queen because
they saw that that way lay glory and promotion.  Others flocked to
the standard of Don Carlos because they were poor and of no
influence at Court.  The Church as a whole raised its whispering
voice for the Pretender.  For the rest, patriotism was nowhere, and
ambition on every side.  'For five years we have fought the
Carlists, hunger, privation, and the politicians at Madrid!  And the
holy saints only know which has been the worst enemy,' said General
Vincente to Conyngham when explaining the above related details.

And indeed the story of this war reads like a romance, for there
came from neutral countries foreign legions as in the olden days.
From England an army of ten thousand mercenaries landed in Spain,
prepared to fight for the cause of Queen Christina, and very
modestly estimating the worth of their services at the sum of
thirteenpence per diem.  After all, the value of a man's life is but
the price of his daily hire.

'We did not pay them much,' said General Vincente with a deprecating
little smile, 'but they did not fight much.  Their pay was generally
in arrear, and they were usually in the rear as well.  What will
you, my dear Conyngham?  You are a commercial people--you keep good
soldiers in the shop window, and when a buyer comes you serve him
with second-class goods from behind the counter.'

He beamed on Conyngham with a pleasant air of benign connivance in a
very legitimate commercial transaction.

This is no time or place to go into the history of the English
Legion in Spain, which, indeed, had quitted that country before
Conyngham landed there, horrified by the barbarities of a cruel war
where prisoners received no quarter and the soldiers on either side
were left without pay or rations.  In a half-hearted manner England
went to the assistance of the Queen Regent of Spain, and one error
in statesmanship led to many.  It is always a mistake to strike
gently.

'This country,' said General Vincente in his suavest manner, 'owes
much to yours, my dear Conyngham; but it would have been better for
us both had we owed you a little more.'

During the five years prior to Conyngham's arrival at Ronda the war
had raged with unabated fury, swaying from the west to the east
coast as fortune smiled or frowned on the Carlist cause.  At one
time it almost appeared certain that the Christino forces were
unable to stem the rising tide which bade fair to spread over all
Spain--so unfortunate were their generals, so futile the best
endeavours of the bravest and most patient soldiers.  General
Vincente was not alone in his conviction that had the gallant
Carlist leader Zumalacarreguy lived he might have carried all before
him.  But this great leader at the height of his fame--beloved of
all his soldiers, worshipped by his subordinate officers--died
suddenly, by poison, as it was whispered, the victim of jealousy and
ambition.  Almost at once there arose in the East of Spain one,
obscure in birth and unknown to fame, who flashed suddenly to the
zenith of military glory--the ruthless, the wonderful Cabrera.  The
name is to this day a household word in Catalonia, while the eyes of
a few old men still living, who fought with or against him, flash in
the light of other days at the mere mention of it.

Among the many leaders who had attempted in vain to overcome by
skill and patriotism the thousand difficulties placed in their way
by successive unstable, insincere Ministers of War, General Vincente
occupied an honoured place.  This mild-mannered tactician enjoyed
the enviable reputation of being alike unconquerable and
incorruptible.  His smiling presence on the battlefield was in
itself worth half a dozen battalions, while at Madrid the dishonest
politicians, who through those years of Spain's great trial
systematically bartered their honour for immediate gain, dreaded and
respected him.

During the days that followed his arrival at Ronda and release from
the prison there, Frederick Conyngham learnt much from his host and
little of the man himself, for General Vincente had that in him with
which no great leader in any walk of life can well dispense--an
unsoundable depth.

Conyngham learnt also that the human heart is capable of rising at
one bound above differences of race or custom, creed and spoken
language.  He walked with Estella in that quiet garden between high
walls on the trim Moorish paths, and often the murmur of the running
water which ever graced the Moslem palaces was the only sound that
broke the silence.  For this thing had come into the Englishman's
life suddenly, leaving him dazed and uncertain.  Estella, on the
other hand, had a quiet savoir-faire that sat strangely on her young
face.  She was only nineteen, and yet had a certain air of
authority, handed down to her from two great races of noble men and
women.

'Do all your countrymen take life thus gaily?' she asked Conyngham
one day; 'surely it is a more serious affair than you think it.'

'I have never found it very serious, senorita,' he answered.  'There
is usually a smile in human affairs if one takes the trouble to look
for it.'

'Have you always found it so?'

He did not answer at once, pausing to lift the branch of a mimosa
tree that hung in yellow profusion across the pathway.

'Yes, senorita, I think so,' he answered at length, slowly.  There
was a sense of eternal restfulness in this old Moorish garden which
acted as a brake on the thoughts, and made conversation halt and
drag in an Oriental way that Europeans rarely understand.

'And yet you say you remember your father's death?'

'He made a joke to the doctor, senorita, and was not afraid.'

Estella smiled in a queer way, and then looked grave again.

'And you have always been poor, you say, sometimes almost starving?'

'Yes--always poor, deadly poor, senorita,' answered Conyngham with a
gay laugh; 'and since I have been on my own resources frequently--
well, very hungry.  The appetite has been large and the resources
have been small.  But when I get into the Spanish army they will no
doubt make me a general, and all will be well.'

He laughed again, and slipped his hand into his jacket pocket.

'See here,' he said, 'your father's recommendation to General
Espartero in a confidential letter.'

But the envelope he produced was that pink one which the man called
Larralde had given him at Algeciras.

'No--it is not that,' he said, searching in another pocket.  'Ah!
here it is--addressed to General Espartero, Duke of Vittoria.'

He showed her the superscription, which she read with a little
inclination of the head, as if in salutation of the great name
written there.  The greatest names are those that men have made for
themselves.  Conyngham replaced the two letters in his pocket and
almost immediately asked:

'Do you know anyone called Barenna in Ronda, senorita?' thereby
proving that General Espartero would do ill to give him an
appointment requiring even the earliest rudiments of diplomacy.

'Julia Barenna is my cousin.  Her mother was my mother's sister.  Do
you know them, Senor Conyngham?'

'Oh no,' answered Conyngham, truthfully enough.  'I met a man who
knows them.  Do they live in Ronda?'

'No; their house is on the Cordova road, about half a league from
the Customs station.'

Estella was not by nature curious, and asked no questions.  Some who
knew the Barennas would have been glad to claim acquaintance with
General Vincente and his daughter, but could not do so.  For the
Captain-General moved in a circle not far removed from the Queen
Regent herself, and mixed but little in the society of Ronda, where,
for the time being, he held a command.

Conyngham required no further information, and in a few moments
dismissed the letter from his mind.  Events seemed for him to have
moved rapidly within the last few days, and the world of roadside
inns and casual acquaintance into which he had stepped on his
arrival in Spain was quite another from that in which Estella moved
at Ronda.

'I must set out for Madrid in a few days at the latest,' he said a
few moments afterwards; 'but I shall go against my will, because you
tell me that you and your father will not be coming North until the
spring.'

Estella shook her head with a little laugh.  This man was different
from the punctilious aides-de-camp and others who had hitherto
begged most respectfully to notify their admiration.

'And three days ago you did not know of our existence,' she said.

'In three days a man may be dead of an illness of which he ignored
the existence, senorita.  In three days a man's life may be made
miserable or happy--perhaps in three minutes.'

And she looked straight in front of her in order to avoid his eyes.

'Yours will always be happy, I think,' she said, 'because you never
seem to go below the surface, and on the surface life is happy
enough.'

He made some light answer, and they walked on beneath the orange
trees, talking of these and other matters--indulging in those
dangerous generalities which sound so safe, and in reality narrow
down to a little world of two.

They were thus engaged when the servant came to announce that the
horse which the General had placed at Conyngham's disposal was at
the door in accordance with the Englishman's own order.  He went
away sorrowfully enough, only half consoled by the information that
Estella was about to attend a service at the Church of Santa Maria,
and could not have stayed longer in the garden.

The hour of the siesta was scarce over, and as Conyngham rode
through the cleanly streets of the ancient town more than one idler
roused himself from the shadow of a doorway to see him pass.  There
are few older towns in Andalusia than Ronda, and scarce anywhere the
habits of the Moors are so closely followed.  The streets are clean,
the houses whitewashed within and without.  The trappings of the
mules and much of the costume of the people are Oriental in texture
and brilliancy.

Conyngham asked a passer-by to indicate the way to the Cordova road,
and the polite Spaniard turned and walked by his stirrup until a
mistake was no longer possible.

'It is not the most beautiful approach to Ronda,' said this
garrulous person, 'but well enough in the summer, when the flowers
are in bloom and the vineyards green.  The road is straight and
dusty until one arrives at the possession of the Senora Barenna--a
narrow road to the right leading up into the mountain.  One can
perceive the house--oh, yes--upon the hillside, once beautiful, but
now old and decayed.  Mistake is now impossible.  It is a straight
way.  I wish you a good journey.'

Conyngham rode on, vaguely turning over in his mind a half-matured
plan of effecting a seemingly accidental entry to the house of
Senora Barenna, in the hope of meeting that lady's daughter in the
garden or grounds.  Once outside the walls of the town he found the
country open and bare, consisting of brown hills, of which the lower
slopes were dotted with evergreen oaks.  The road soon traversed a
village which seemed to be half deserted, for men and women alike
were working in the fields.  On the balcony of the best house a
branch of palm bound against the ironwork balustrade indicated the
dwelling of the priest, and the form of that village despot was
dimly discernible in the darkened room behind.  Beyond the village
Conyngham turned his horse's head towards the mountain, his mind
preoccupied with a Macchiavellian scheme of losing his way in this
neighbourhood.  Through the evergreen oak and olive groves he could
perceive the roof of an old grey house which had once been a mere
hacienda or semi-fortified farm.

Conyngham did not propose to go direct to Senora Barenna's house,
but described a semicircle, mounting from terrace to terrace on his
sure-footed horse.

When at length he came in sight of the high gateway where the ten-
foot oaken gates still swung, he perceived someone approaching the
exit.  On closer inspection he saw that this was a priest, and on
nearing him recognised the Padre Concha, whose acquaintance he had
made at the Hotel of the Marina at Algeciras.

The recognition was mutual, for the priest raised his shabby old hat
with a tender care for the insecurity of its brim.

'A lucky meeting, Senor Englishman,' he said; 'who would have
expected to see you here?'

'I have lost my way.'

'Ah!'  And the grim face relaxed into a smile.  'Lost your way?'

'Yes.'

'Then it is lucky that I have met you.  It is so easy to lose one's
way--when one is young.'

He raised his hand to the horse's bridle.

'You are most certainly going in the wrong direction,' he said; 'I
will lead you right.'

It was said and done so quietly that Conyngham had found no word to
say before his horse was moving in the opposite direction.

'This is surely one of General Vincente's horses,' said the priest;
'we have few such barbs in Ronda.  He always rides a good horse,
that Miguel Vincente.'

'Yes, it is one of his horses.  Then you know the General?'

'We were boys together,' answered the Padre; 'and there were some
who said that he should have been the priest and I the soldier.'

The old man gave a little laugh.

'He has prospered, however, if I have not.  A great man, my dear
Miguel, and they say that his pay is duly handed to him.  My own--my
princely twenty pounds a year--is overdue.  I am happy enough,
however, and have a good house.  You noticed it, perhaps, as you
passed through the village, a branch of palm against the rail of the
balcony--my sign, you understand.  The innkeeper next door displays
a branch of pine, which, I notice, is more attractive.  Every man
his day.  One does not catch rabbits with a dead ferret.  That is
the church--will you see it?  No?  Well, some other day.  I will
guide you through the village.  The walk will give me appetite,
which I sometimes require, for my cook is one whose husband has left
her.'



CHAPTER VIII.  THE LOVE LETTER.



'I must mix myself with action lest I wither by despair.'

'No one,' Conyngham heard a voice exclaiming as he went into the
garden on returning from his fruitless ride, 'no one knows what I
have suffered.'

He paused in the dark doorway, not wishing to intrude upon Estella
and her visitors; for he perceived the forms of three ladies seated
within a miniature jungle of bamboo, which grew in feathery
luxuriance around a fountain.  It was not difficult to identify the
voice as that of the eldest lady, who was stout, and spoke in deep,
almost manly tones.  So far as he was able to judge, the suffering
mentioned had left but small record on its victim's outward
appearance.

'Old lady seems to have stood it well,' commented the Englishman in
his mind.

'Never again, my dear Estella, do I leave Ronda, except indeed for
Toledo, where, of course, we shall go in the summer if this terrible
Don Carlos is really driven from the country.  Ah! but what
suffering!  My mind is never at ease.  I expect to wake up at night
and hear that Julia is being murdered in her bed.  For me it does
not matter; my life is not so gay that it will cost me much to part
from it.  No one would molest an old woman, you think?  Well, that
may be so; but I know all the anxiety, for I was once beautiful--ah!
more beautiful than you or Julia; and my hands and feet--have you
ever noticed my foot, Estella?--even now--!'

And a sonorous sigh completed the sentence.  Conyngham stepped out
of the doorway, the clank of his spurred heel on the marble pavement
causing the sigh to break off in a little scream.  He had caught the
name of Julia, and hastily concluded that these ladies must be no
other than Madame Barenna and her daughter.  In the little bamboo
grove he found the elder lady lying back in her chair, which creaked
ominously, and asking in a faint voice whether he were Don Carlos.

'No,' answered Estella, with a momentary twinkle in her grave, dark
eyes; 'this is Mr. Conyngham--my aunt, Senora Barenna, and my cousin
Julia.'

The ladies bowed.

'You must excuse me,' said Madame Barenna volubly, 'but your
approach was so sudden.  I am a great sufferer--my nerves, you know.
But young people do not understand.'

And she sighed heavily, with a side glance at her daughter, who did
not even appear to be trying to do so.  Julia Barenna was darker
than her cousin, quicker in manner, with an air of worldly
capability which Estella lacked.  Her eyes were quick and restless,
her face less beautiful, but expressive of a great intelligence,
which, if brought to bear upon men in the form of coquetry, was
likely to be infinitely dangerous.

'It is always best to approach my mother with caution,' she said
with a restless movement of her hands.  This was not a woman at her
ease in the world or at peace with it.  She laughed as she spoke,
but her eyes were grave, even while her lips smiled, and watched the
Englishman's face with an air almost of anxiety.  There are some
faces that seem to be watching and waiting.  Julia Barenna's had
such a look.

'Conyngham,' said Madame Barenna reflectively.  'Surely I have heard
that name before.  You are not the Englishman with whom Father
Concha is so angry--who sells forbidden books--the Bible, it is
said?'

'No, senora,' answered Conyngham with perfect gravity; 'I have
nothing to sell.'

He laughed suddenly, and looked at the elder lady with that air of
good humour which won for him more friends than he ever wanted; for
this Irishman had a ray of sunshine in his heart which shone upon
his path through life, and made that uneven way easier for his feet.
He glanced at Julia, and saw in her eyes the look of expectancy
which was, in reality, always there.  The thought flashed through
his mind that by some means, or perhaps feminine intuition beyond
his comprehension, she knew that he possessed the letter addressed
to her, and was eagerly awaiting it.  This letter seemed to have
been gaining in importance the longer he carried it, and this
opportunity of giving it to her came at the right moment.  He
remembered Larralde's words concerning the person to whom the
missive was addressed, and the high-flown sentiments of that
somewhat theatrical gentleman became in some degree justified.
Julia Barenna was a woman who might well awaken a passionate love.
Conyngham realised this, as from a distance, while Julia's mother
spoke of some trivial matter of the moment to unheeding ears.  That
distance seemed now to exist between him and all women.  It had come
suddenly, and one glance of Estella's eyes had called it into
existence.

'Yes,' Senora Barenna was saying, 'Father Concha is very angry with
the English.  What a terrible man!  You do not know him, Senor
Conyngham?'

'I think I have met him, senora.'

'Ah, but you have never seen him angry.  You have never confessed to
him!  A little, little sin--no larger than the eye of a fly--a
little bite of a calf's sweetbread on Friday in mere forgetfulness,
and Sancta Maria! what a penance is required!  What suffering!  It
is a purgatory to have such a confessor.'

'Surely madame can have no sins,' said Conyngham pleasantly.

'Not now,' said Senora Barenna with a deep sigh.  'When I was young
it was different.'

And the memory of her sinful days almost moved her to tears.  She
glanced at Conyngham with a tragic air of mutual understanding, as
if drawing a veil over that blissful past in the presence of Julia
and Estella.  'Ask me another time,' that glance seemed to say.

'Yes,' the lady continued, 'Father Concha is very angry with the
English.  Firstly, because of these bibles.  Blessed Heaven! what
does it matter?  No one can read them except the priests, and they
do not want to do so.  Secondly, because the English have helped to
overthrow Don Carlos--'

'You will have a penance,' interrupted Miss Julia Barenna quietly,
'from Father Concha for talking politics.'

'But how will he know?' asked Senora Barenna sharply; and the two
young ladies laughed.

Senora Barenna looked from one to the other, and shrugged her
shoulders.  Like many women she was a strange mixture of foolishness
and worldly wisdom.  She adjusted her mantilla and mutely appealed
to Heaven with a glance of her upturned eyes.  Conyngham, who was no
diplomatist, nor possessed any skill in concealing his thoughts,
looked with some interest at Julia Barenna, and Estella watched him.
'Julia is right,' Senora Barenna was saying, though nobody heeded
her; 'one must not talk nor even think politics in this country.
You are no politician, I trust, Senor Conyngham--Senor Conyngham, I
ask you, you are no politician?'

'No, senora,' replied Conyngham hastily; 'no; and if I were, I
should never understand Spanish politics.'

'Father Concha says that Spanish politics are the same as those of
any other country--each man for himself,' said Julia with a bitter
laugh.

'And he is, no doubt, right.'

'Do you really think so?' asked Julia Barenna, with more earnestness
than the question would seem to require; 'are there not true
patriots who sacrifice all--not only their friends, but themselves--
to the cause of their country?'

'Without the hope of reward?'

'Yes.'

'There may be, senorita--a few,' answered Conyngham with a laugh,
'but not in my country.  They must all be in Spain.'

She smiled and shook her head in doubt.  But it was a worn smile.

The Englishman turned away and looked through the trees.  He was
wondering how he could get speech with Julia alone for a moment.

'You are admiring the garden,' said that young lady; and this time
he knew that there had in reality been that meaning in her eyes
which he had imagined to be there.

'Yes, senorita, I think it must be the most beautiful garden in the
world.'

He turned as he spoke, and looked at Estella, who met his glance
quietly.  Her repose of manner struck him afresh.  Here was a woman
having that air of decision which exacts respect alike from men and
women.  Seen thus, with the more vivacious Julia at her side,
Estella gained suddenly in moral strength and depth--suggesting a
steady fire in contrast with a flickering will-o'-the-wisp blown
hither and thither on every zephyr.  Yet Julia Barenna would pass
anywhere as a woman of will and purpose.

Julia had risen, and was moving towards the exit of the little grove
in which they found themselves.  Conyngham had never been seated.

'Are the violets in bloom, Estella?  I must see them,' said the
visitor.  'We have none at home, where all is dry and parched.'

'So bad for the nerves--what suffering!--such a dry soil that one
cannot sleep at night,' murmured Madame Barenna, preparing to rise
from her seat.

Julia and Conyngham naturally led the way.  The paths winding in and
out among the palms and pepper trees were of a width that allowed
two to walk abreast.

'Senorita, I have a letter for you.'

'Not yet--wait!'

Senora Barenna was chattering in her deep husky tones immediately
behind them.  Julia turned and looked up at the windows of the
house, which commanded a full view of the garden.  The dwelling
rooms were as usual upon the first floor, and the windows were
lightly barred with curiously wrought iron.  Each window was
curtained within with lace and muslin.

The paths wound in and out among the trees, but none of these were
large enough to afford a secure screen from the eye of any watcher
within the house.  There was neither olive nor ilex in the garden to
afford shelter with their heavy leaves.  Julia and Conyngham walked
on, out-distancing the elder lady and Estella.  From these many a
turn in the path hid them from time to time, but Julia was
distrustful of the windows and hesitated, in an agony of
nervousness.  Conyngham saw that her face was quite colourless, and
her teeth closed convulsively over her lower lip.  He continued to
talk of indifferent topics, but the answers she made were incoherent
and broken.  The course of true love did not seem to run smooth
here.

'Shall I give you the letter?  No one can see us, senorita.
Besides, I was informed that it was of no importance except to
yourself.  You have doubtless had many such before, unless the
Spanish gentlemen are blind.'

He laughed and felt in his pocket.

'Yes!' she whispered.  'Quickly--now.'

He gave her the letter in its romantic pink, scented envelope with a
half-suppressed smile at her eagerness.  Would anybody--would
Estella--ever be thus agitated at the receipt of a letter from
himself?  They were at the lower end of the inclosure, which was
divided almost in two by a broader pathway leading from the house to
the centre of the garden, where a fountain of Moorish marble formed
a sort of carrefour, from which the narrower pathways diverged in
all directions.

Descending the steps into the garden from the house were two men,
one talking violently, the other seeking to calm him.

'My uncle and the Alcalde--they have seen us from the windows,' said
Julia quickly.  All her nervousness of manner seemed to have
vanished, leaving her concentrated and alert.  Some men are thus in
warfare--nervous until the rifle opens fire, and then cool and
ready.

'Quick!' whispered Julia.  'Let us turn back.'

She wheeled round, and Conyngham did the same.

'Julia!' they heard General Vincente call in his gentle voice.

Julia, who was tearing the pink envelope, took no heed.  Within the
first covering a second envelope appeared, bearing a longer address.
'Give that to the man whose address it bears, and save me from
ruin,' said the girl, thrusting the letter into Conyngham's hand.
She kept the pink envelope.

When, a minute later, they came face to face with General Vincente
and his companion, a white-faced, fluttering man of sixty years,
Julia Barenna received them with a smile.  There are some men who,
conscious of their own quickness of resource, are careless of
danger, and run into it from mere heedlessness, trusting to good
fortune to aid them should peril arise.  Frederick Conyngham was one
of these.  He now suspected that this was no love letter which the
man called Larralde had given him in Algeciras.

'Julia,' said the General, 'the Alcalde desires to speak with you.'

Julia bowed with that touch of hauteur which in Spain the nobles
ever observe in their manner towards the municipal authorities.

'Mr. Conyngham,' continued the General, 'this is our brave Mayor, in
whose hands rests the well-being of the people of Ronda.'

'Honoured to meet you,' said Conyngham, holding out his hand with
that frankness of manner which he accorded to great and small alike.
The Alcalde, a man of immense importance in his own estimation,
hesitated before accepting it.

'General,' he said, turning and bowing very low to Senora Barenna
and Estella, who now joined them, 'General, I leave you to explain
to your niece the painful duties of my office.'

The General smiled and raised a deprecating shoulder.

'Well, my dear,' he said kindly to Julia, 'it appears that our good
Alcalde has news of a letter which is at present passing from hand
to hand in Andalusia.  It is a letter of some importance.  Our good
Mayor, who was at the window a minute ago, saw Mr. Conyngham hand
you a letter.  Between persons who only met in this garden five
minutes ago such a transaction had a strange air.  Our good friend,
who is all zeal for Spain and the people of Ronda, merely asks you
if his eyes deceived him.  It is a matter at which we shall all
laugh presently over a lemonade--is it not so?  A trifle, eh?'  He
passed his handkerchief across his moustache, and looked
affectionately at his niece.

'A letter!' exclaimed Julia.  'Surely the Alcalde presumes.  He
takes too much upon himself.'  The official stepped forward.

'Senorita,' he said, 'I must be allowed to take that risk.  Did this
gentleman give you a letter three minutes ago?'

Julia laughed and shrugged her shoulders.

'Yes.'

'May I ask the nature of the letter?'

'It was a love letter.'

Conyngham bit his lip and looked at Estella.

The Alcalde looked doubtful, with the cunning lips of a cheap
country lawyer.

'A love letter from a gentleman you have never seen before?' he said
with a forced laugh.

'Pardon me, Senor Alcalde, this gentleman travelled in the same ship
with my mother and myself from Bordeaux to Algeciras, and he saved
my life.'

She cast a momentary glance at Conyngham; which would have sealed
his fate had the fiery Mr. Larralde been there to see it.  The
Prefect paused, somewhat taken aback.  There was a momentary
silence, and every moment gave Julia and Conyngham time to think.
Then the Alcalde turned to Conyngham.

'It will give me the greatest pleasure,' he said, 'to learn that I
have been mistaken.  I have only to ask this gentleman's
confirmation of what the senorita has said.  It is true, senor, that
you surreptitiously handed to the Senorita Barenna a letter
expressing your love?'

'Since the senorita has done me the honour of confessing it, I must
ask you to believe it,' answered Conyngham steadily and coldly.



CHAPTER IX.  A WAR OF WIT.



'La discretion est l'art du mensonge.'

The Alcalde blew out his cheeks and looked at General Vincente.
Senora Barenna would with small encouragement have thrown herself
into Conyngham's arms; but she received none whatever, and instead
frowned at Julia.  Estella was looking haughtily at her father, and
would not meet Conyngham's glance.

'I feel sure,' said General Vincente in his most conciliating
manner, 'that my dear Julia will see the necessity of satisfying the
good Alcalde by showing him the letter--with, of course, the consent
of my friend Conyngham.'

He laughed, and slipped his hand within Conyngham's arm.

'You see, my dear friend,' he said in English, 'these local magnates
are a trifle inflated; local magnitude is a little inclined to
inflate, eh?  Ha! ha!  And it is so easy to conciliate them.  I
always try to do so myself.  Peace at any price--that is my motto.'

And he turned aside to arrange his sword, which dragged on the
ground.

'Tell her, my dear Conyngham, to let the old gentleman read the
letter.'

'But it is nothing to do with me, General.'

'I know that, my friend, as well as you do,' said Vincente with a
sudden change of manner, which gave the Englishman an uncomfortable
desire to know what he meant.  But General Vincente, in pursuit of
that peace which had earned him such a terrible reputation in war,
turned to Senora Barenna with his most reassuring smile.

'It is nothing, my dear Inez,' he said.  'In these times of trouble
the officials are so suspicious, and our dear Alcalde knows too
much.  He remembers dear Julia's little affair with Esteban
Larralde, now long since lived down and forgotten.  Larralde is, it
appears, a malcontent, and on the wrong side of the wall.  You need
have no uneasiness.  Ah! your nerves--yes, I know!  A great
sufferer--yes, I remember.  Patience, dear Inez, patience!'

And he patted her stout white hand affectionately.

The Alcalde was taking snuff with a stubborn air of disbelief,
glancing the while suspiciously at Conyngham, who had eyes for none
but Estella.

'Alcalde,' said General Vincente, 'the incident is past, as we say
in the diplomatic service; a lemonade now?'

'No, General, the incident is not past, and I will not have a
lemonade.'

'Oh!' exclaimed General Vincente in gentle horror.

'Yes, this young lady must give me the letter, or I call in my men.'

'But your men could not touch a lady, my dear Alcalde.'

'You may be the Alcalde of Ronda,' said Conyngham cheerfully, in
continuation of the General's argument; 'but if you offer such an
insult to Senorita Barenna, I throw you into the fountain, in the
deepest part, where it is wettest, just there by the marble
dolphin.'

And Conyngham indicated the exact spot with his riding-whip.

'Who is this gentleman?' asked the Alcalde.  The question was in the
first place addressed to space and the gods--after a moment the
speaker turned to General Vincente.

'A prospective aide-de-camp of General Espartero.'

At the mention of the great name the Mayor of Ronda became
beautifully less and half bowed to Conyngham.

'I must do my duty,' he said with the stubbornness of a small mind.

'And what do you conceive that to be, my dear Alcalde?' inquired the
General.

'To place the Senorita Barenna under arrest unless she will hand to
me the letter she has in her possession.'  Julia looked at him with
a smile.  She was a brave woman, playing a dangerous game with
consummate courage, and never glanced at Conyngham, who with an
effort kept his hand away from the pocket where the letter lay
concealed.  The manner in which she trusted him unreservedly and
entirely was in itself cunning enough, for it appealed to that sense
of chivalry which is not yet dead in men.

'Place me under arrest, Senor Alcalde,' she said indifferently, 'and
when you have satisfied me that you have a right to inspect a lady's
private correspondence I will submit to be searched--but not
before.'

She made a little signal to Conyngham not to interfere.

Senora Barenna took this opportunity of asserting herself and her
nerves.  She sat heavily down on a stone seat and wept.  She could
hardly have done better, for she was a countess in her own right,
and the sight of high-born tears distinctly unnerved the Alcalde.

'Well,' he said, 'the senorita has made her own choice.  In these
times' (he glanced nervously at the weeping lady) 'one must do one's
duty.'

'My dear Julia,' protested the General, 'you who are so sensible--'

Julia shrugged her shoulders and laughed.  She not only trusted
Conyngham but relied upon his intelligence.  It is as a rule safer
to confide in the honesty of one's neighbour than in his wit; better
still, trust in neither.  Conyngham, who was quick enough when the
moment required it, knew that she was fostering the belief that the
letter at that moment in his pocket was in her possession.  He
suspected also that he and Julia Barenna were playing with life and
death.  Further, he recognised her and her voice.  This was the
woman who had showed discrimination and calmness in face of a great
danger on the Garonne.  Had this Englishman, owning as he did to a
strain of Irish blood, turned his back on her and danger at such a
moment he would assuredly have proved himself untrue to the annals
of that race which has made a mark upon the world that will never be
wiped out.  He looked at the Alcalde and smiled, whereupon that
official turned and made a signal with his hand to a man who,
dressed in a quiet uniform, had appeared in the doorway of the
house.

'What the deuce we are all trying to do I don't know,' reflected
Conyngham, who indeed was sufficiently at sea to awake the most
dormant suspicions.

The Alcalde, now thoroughly aroused, protested his inability to
neglect a particle of his duty at this troubled period of Spain's
history, and announced his intention of placing Julia Barenna under
surveillance until she handed him the letter she had received from
Conyngham.

'I am quite prepared,' he added, 'to give this caballero the benefit
of the doubt, and assume that he has been in this matter the tool of
unscrupulous persons.  Seeing that he is a friend of General
Vincente's, and has an introduction to his Excellency the Duke of
Vittoria, he is without the pale of my jurisdiction.'

The Alcalde made Conyngham a profound bow and proceeded to conduct
Julia and her indignant mother to their carriage.

'There goes,' said General Vincente with his most optimistic little
chuckle, 'a young woman whose head will always be endangered by her
heart.'  And he nodded towards Julia's retreating form.

Estella turned and walked away by herself.

'Come,' said the General to Conyngham, 'let us sit down.  I have
news for you.  But what a susceptible heart--my dear young friend--
what a susceptible heart!  Julia is, I admit, a very pretty girl--la
beaute du diable, eh!  But on so short an acquaintance--rather
rapid, rather rapid!'

As he spoke he was searching among some letters which he had
produced from his pocket, and at length found an official envelope
that had already been opened.

'I have here,' he said, 'a letter from Madrid.  You have only to
proceed to the capital, and there I hope a post awaits you.  Your
duties will at present be of a semi-military character, but later I
hope we can show you some fighting.  This pestilential Cabrera is
not yet quelled, and Morella still holds out.  Yes, there will be
fighting.'

He closed the letter and looked at Conyngham.  'If that is what you
want,' he added.

'Yes, that is what I want.'

The General nodded and rose, pausing to brush a few grains of dust
from his dapper riding-breeches.

'Come,' he said, 'I have seen a horse which will suit you at the
cavalry quarters in the Calle de Bobadilla.  Shall we go and look at
him?'

Conyngham expressed his readiness to do as the General proposed.

'When shall I start for Madrid?' he asked.

'Oh, to-morrow morning will be time enough,' was the reply, uttered
in an easy-going, indolent tone, 'if you are early astir.  You see,
it is now nearly five o'clock, and you could scarcely be in saddle
before sunset.'

'No,' laughed Conyngham, 'scarcely, considering that I have not yet
bought the saddle or the horse.'

The General led the way into the house, and Conyngham thought of the
letter in his pocket.  He had not yet read the address.  Julia
relied upon him to deliver it, and her conduct towards the Alcalde
had the evident object of gaining time for him to do so.  She had
unhesitatingly thrust herself into a position of danger to screen
him and further her own indomitable purpose.  He thought of her--
still as from a distance at which Estella had placed him--and knew
that she not only had a disquieting beauty, but cleverness and
courage, which are qualities that outlast beauty and make a woman
powerful for ever.

When he and his companion emerged from the great doorway of the
house into the sunlight of the Calle Mayor, a man came forward from
the shade of a neighbouring porch.  It was Concepcion Vara,
leisurely and dignified, twirling a cigarette between his brown
fingers.  He saluted the General with one finger to the brim of his
shabby felt hat as one great man might salute another.  He nodded to
Conyngham.

'When does his Excellency take the road again?' he said.  'I am
ready.  The Guardia Civil was mistaken this time--the judge said
there was no stain on my name.'

He shrugged his shoulders and waved away the slight with the
magnanimity of one who can forgive and forget.

'I take the road to-morrow; but our contract ceased at Ronda.  I had
no intention of taking you on.'

'You are not satisfied with me?' inquired Concepcion, offering his
interlocutor the cigarette he had just made.

'Oh, yes.'

'Buen!  We take the road together.'

'Then there is nothing more to be said?' inquired Conyngham with a
good-natured laugh.

'Nothing, except the hour at which your Excellency starts.'

'Six o'clock,' put in General Vincente quietly.  'Let me see, your
name is Concepcion Vara.'

'Yes, Excellency--of Algeciras.'

'It is well.  Then serve this gentleman well, or else--'  The
General paused, and laughed in his most deprecating manner.

Concepcion seemed to understand, for he took off his hat and turned
gravely away.  The General and Conyngham walked rapidly through the
streets of Ronda, than which there are none cleaner in the whole
world, and duly bought a great black horse at a price which seemed
moderate enough to the Englishman, though the vendor explained that
the long war had made horseflesh rise in value.  Conyngham, at no
time a keen bargainer, hurried the matter to an end, and scarce
examined the saddle.  He was anxious to get back to the garden of
the great house in the Calle Mayor before the cool of evening came
to drive Estella indoors.

'You will doubtless wish to pack your portmanteau,' said the General
rather breathlessly, as he hurried along with small steps beside
Conyngham.

'Yes,' answered the Englishman ingenuously, 'yes, of course.'

'Then I will not detain you,' said General Vincente.  'I have
affairs at headquarters.  We meet at dinner, of course.'

He waved a little salutation with his whip and took a side turning.

The sun had not set when Conyngham with a beating heart made his way
through the house into the garden.  He had never been so serious
about anything in his life.  Indeed, his life seemed only to have
begun in that garden.  Estella was there.  He saw her black dress
and mantilla through the trees, and the gleam of her golden hair
made his eyes almost fierce for the moment.

'I am going to-morrow morning,' he said bluntly when he reached her
where she sat in the shade of a mimosa.

She raised her eyes for a moment--deep velvet eyes with s