pped at Andujar; thus fate would again bring me
near to Monica, despite our promise.

The main reason for going to Linares was because the Cherub believed there
was a fair hotel, built to accommodate Englishmen collected for the
lead-mining; therefore it was without regret that we turned the Gloria to
follow the _carretera_ to Cordoba.

Our advisers ran after us with a warning to avoid the rough cobbles of
Bailen by taking the _ronda_ which skirts the town on its left. So slowly,
in dusk that blossomed blue as the myrtle flower, we passed round outside
the town, regained the high road, leaping at speed into a world of wide,
silvery spaces and mystery of violet hollows, diving into the deep valley
of the swollen river, and rejoicing in a hard surface of good macadam for
fifteen miles or more.

Thus we arrived at Andujar, the lights of our great acetylene lamps (lit
before the sky turned from opal to amethyst) prying into dark doorways and
windows as Roentgen rays pry through flesh to bone.

In the white glare, pretty girls in doorways looked like actresses in a
costume play, waiting in the wings to "go on." But no yells of a stage mob
ever were so realistic as those of the unrehearsed band who howled over my
poor Gloria as she deposited her passengers at the _fonda_; and Ropes and
I pushed her through a wall of human beings to a stable-garage, where her
flywheel gushed a protest of fiery sparks on the high stone step of
entrance.

The _fonda_ was passable; but Carmona and his party were not there;
neither were they anywhere else in Andujar, as we made it our business to
discover; and we guessed that the grey car must after all have ventured to
Linares.

As it had vanished, we were free to start when we chose next morning. So
we chose an early hour, flying over good roads through a land embroidered
with the scarlet of poppies, the blue of gentian, the pink of clover, and
gold of buttercups, stitched in with the silver of little running streams.

" 'Give us bread and give us bulls,' is the cry of this country," said the
Cherub, greeting with joyous glances each feature of his loved Andalucia.

"It sounds like a beef sandwich," Dick reflected aloud; but Pilar
reproached him for flippancy. "You mustn't make jokes about bread in
Andalucia!" she exclaimed. "And it's called a sin ever to throw away a
crumb. Because it's the gift of Heaven, if you drop a bit you must pick it
up and apologize by kissing it."

"Why not e