glimpse they got of it,
showing spitefully triumphant.

He could not see them, though his eyes interrogated the windows while he
was riding past. They had taken care to extinguish the light in their
room.

"_Virgin Santissima_! Mother of God!" exclaimed one of the ladies,
Luisa Valverde, as she dropped on her knees in prayer, "Send that
they've got safe off ere this!"

"Make your mind easy, _amiga_!" counselled the Condesa Almonte in less
precatory tone. "I'm good as sure they have. Jose cannot fail to have
reached and given them warning. That will be enough."

A mile or so beyond San Augustin the southern road becomes too steep for
horses to go at a gallop, without risk of breaking their wind. So there
the Hussars had to change to a slower pace--a walk in fact. There were
other reasons for coming to this. The sound of their hoof-strokes
ascending would be heard far up the mountain, might reach the ears of
those in the monastery, and so thwart the surprise intended for them.

While toiling more leisurely up the steep, any one chancing to look in
the hunchback's face would there have observed an expression
indescribable. Sadness pervaded it, with an air of perplexity, as
though he had met with some misfortune he could not quite comprehend.

And so had he. Before leaving the spot where the stiletto was taken
from him, he had sought an opportunity to step back into that shady
niche in the cliff where he had lost his treasures. The _monte_
players, unsuspicious of his object, made no objection. But instead of
there finding what he had expected, he saw only a pair of horse-halters:
one lying coiled upon the ground, the head-stall of the other caught
over the rock above, the rope end dangling down!

An inexplicable phenomenon, which, however, he had kept to himself, and
ever since been cudgelling his brains to account for.

But soon after he had something else to think of: the time having
arrived when he was called upon to give proof of his capability as a
guide. Heretofore it had been all plain road riding; but now they had
reached a point spoken of by himself where the _calzada_ must be
forsaken. The horses, too, left behind; everything but their weapons;
the path beyond being barely practicable for men afoot.

Dismounting all, at a command--this time not given by the bugle--and
leaving a sufficient detail to look after the animals, they commenced
the ascent, their guide, seemingly more quadruped tha