In Kedar's Tents

‘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 Concepçion Vara that the English Excellency had selected him on his—the host’s—assurance that Algeciras contained no other so honest.

‘Tell him,’ answered Concepçion 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.’

Concepçion, 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.

Concepçion 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.

Concepçion 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, Concepçion 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 Concepçion 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 Concepçion 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, Concepçion 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.

Concepçion 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, Señor Vara,’ he added to the guide, ‘I shoot you first, understand that.’

‘He says,’ answered Concepçion 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 Concepçion 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, Concepçion 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 Concepçion’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 Concepçion, throwing down his cigarette.  ‘Mother of God! these Guardias Civiles!’

The two guards came clambering down the face of the rock.  Concepçion 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.’

Concepçion 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 Concepçion Vara, we all know him.’

Concepçion 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 Concepçion 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.

‘Le plus grand art d’un habile homme est celui de savoir cacher son habileté.’

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 Señor 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, Señor 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 señorita?’ inquired the General.

‘The señorita 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.

‘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, señorita,’ 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, señorita, 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, señorita, 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, señorita,’ 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, señorita?’ 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, Señor 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, señorita.  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 Señora 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 Señora 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 Señora 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, Señor 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.’

‘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, Señora 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, señora,’ 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,’ Señora Barenna was saying, ‘Father Concha is very angry with the English.  What a terrible man!  You do not know him, Señor Conyngham?’

‘I think I have met him, señora.’

‘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 Señora 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 Señora Barenna sharply; and the two young ladies laughed.

Señora 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,’ Señora Barenna was saying, though nobody heeded her; ‘one must not talk nor even think politics in this country.  You are no politician, I trust, Señor Conyngham—Señor Conyngham, I ask you, you are no politician?’

‘No, señora,’ 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, señorita—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, señorita, 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.

‘Señorita, I have a letter for you.’

‘Not yet—wait!’

Señora 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, señorita.  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 Señora 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.

‘Señorita,’ 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, Señor 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 señorita has said.  It is true, señor, that you surreptitiously handed to the Señorita Barenna a letter expressing your love?’

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

‘La discrétion est l’art du mensonge.’

The Alcalde blew out his cheeks and looked at General Vincente.  Señora 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 Señora Barenna with his most reassuring smile.

‘It is nothing, my dear Iñez,’ 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 Iñez, 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 Señorita 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 Señorita 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, Señor 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.

Señora 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 señorita 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 beauté 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.