we are carrying out all this deadly
foolishness as conscientiously as though the eyes of the Senora were on
us all the time. And as to risk, I suppose we take more than she would
approve of, I fancy, if she ever gave a moment's thought to us out here.
Now, for instance, in the next half hour, we may come any moment on three
carabineers who would let off their pieces without asking questions.
Even your way of flinging money about cannot make safety for men set on
defying a whole big country for the sake of--what is it exactly?--the
blue eyes, or the white arms of the Senora."

He kept his voice equably low. It was a lonely spot and but for a vague
shape of a dwarf tree here and there we had only the flying clouds for
company. Very far off a tiny light twinkled a little way up the seaward
shoulder of an invisible mountain. Dominic moved on.

"Fancy yourself lying here, on this wild spot, with a leg smashed by a
shot or perhaps with a bullet in your side. It might happen. A star
might fall. I have watched stars falling in scores on clear nights in
the Atlantic. And it was nothing. The flash of a pinch of gunpowder in
your face may be a bigger matter. Yet somehow it's pleasant as we
stumble in the dark to think of our Senora in that long room with a shiny
floor and all that lot of glass at the end, sitting on that divan, you
call it, covered with carpets as if expecting a king indeed. And very
still . . ."

He remembered her--whose image could not be dismissed.

I laid my hand on his shoulder.

"That light on the mountain side flickers exceedingly, Dominic. Are we
in the path?"

He addressed me then in French, which was between us the language of more
formal moments.

"_Prenez mon bras_, _monsieur_. Take a firm hold, or I will have you
stumbling again and falling into one of those beastly holes, with a good
chance to crack your head. And there is no need to take offence. For,
speaking with all respect, why should you, and I with you, be here on
this lonely spot, barking our shins in the dark on the way to a
confounded flickering light where there will be no other supper but a
piece of a stale sausage and a draught of leathery wine out of a stinking
skin. Pah!"

I had good hold of his arm. Suddenly he dropped the formal French and
pronounced in his inflexible voice:

"For a pair of white arms, Senor. _Bueno_."

He could understand.

CHAPTER III

On our return from that expedition we ca