ed up, and
with a long fishing-pole he flaunted a strip of white beside the red,
waving it this way and that for a long time, till in the close
atmosphere of the strong-room the sweat rained from him in great drops.

Then he leaped down at last, muttering, "If the General is within twenty
miles, as I think he is, that ought to bring him to Sarria. The angels
grant that he arrive in time" (here he paused a moment, and then added
with a bitter smile), "or the devils either. I am not particular, so be
that he come!"

CHAPTER XIX

SIGNALS OF STORM

A long strip of Moorish-looking wall and certain towers that glittered
white in the sun, advertised to Rollo that he approached the venta of
Sarria. Without, that building might have passed for the palace of a
grandee; within--but we know already what it was like within.

Rollo was impatient to find his companions. He had just discovered that
he had most scurvily neglected them, and now he was all eagerness to
make amends. But the house-place of the Cafe de Madrid was tenanted only
by the Valiant and a clean silently-moving maid, who solved the problem
of perpetual motion by finding something to do simultaneously in the
kitchen, out in the shady _patio_ among the copper water-vessels, and up
in the sleeping chambers above.

Rollo's questioning produced nothing but a sleepy grunt from Don Gaspar
Perico.

"Gone--no! They had better not," he muttered, "better not--without
paying their score--bread and ham and eggs, to say nothing of the noise
and disturbance they had occasioned. The tallest was a spitfire, a
dare-devil--ah, your excellency, I did not know----"

Here Don Gaspar the Valiant, who had been muttering in his beard more
than half asleep, awoke suddenly to the fact that the dare-devil
aforesaid stood before him, fingering his sword-hilt and twisting his
moustache.

But he was a stout old soldier, this Gaspar Perico, and had a moustache
of his own which he could finger with anybody.

"I crave your pardon, Senor," he said, rising and saluting, "I think I
must have been asleep. Until this moment I was not aware of your
honourable presence."

"My companions--where are they?" said Rollo, hastily. He had much on his
mind, and wished to despatch business. Patience he had none. If a girl
refused him he sprang into the first ship and betook himself to other
skies and kinder maidens. If a battle went wrong, he would fight on to
the death, or at least till he wa