they passed near enough to distinguish in the far
north the snow-flecked buttresses of the Sierra de Moncayo. But these,
they knew, were the haunts of their Carlist allies. The towns and
villages of the plain, however, were invariably held by Nationals, and
it had often gone hard with them, had not Sergeant Cardono detached
himself from the cavalcade, and, venturing alone into the midst of the
enemy, by methods of his own produced the materials for many an
excellent meal. At last, one day the Sergeant came back to the party
with an added gloom on his long, lean, leathern-textured face. He had
brought with him an Estramaduran ham, a loaf of wheaten bread, and a
double string of sausages. But upon his descending into the temporary
camp which sheltered the party in the bottom of a _barranco_, or deep
crack in the parched plateau overgrown with scented thyme and dwarf
oak, it became obvious that he had news of the most serious import to
communicate.

He called Rollo aside, and told him how he had made his way into a
village, as was his custom, and found all quiet--the shops open, but
none to attend to them, the customs superintendent in his den by the
gate, seated on his easy chair, but dead--the presbytery empty of the
priest, the river bank dotted with its array of worn scrubbing boards,
but not a washerwoman to be seen. Only a lame lad, furtively plundering,
had leaped backward upon his crutch with a swift drawing of his knife
and a wolfish gleam of teeth. He had first of all warned the Sergeant to
keep off at his peril, but had afterwards changed his tone and confessed
to him that the plague was abroad in the valley of the Duero, and that
he was the only being left alive in the village save the vulture and the
prowling dog.

"The plague!" Sergeant Cardono had gasped, like every Spaniard stricken
sick at the very sound of the word.

"Yes, and I own everything in the village," asserted the imp. "If you
want anything here you must pay me for it!"

The Sergeant found it even as the cripple had said. There was not a
single living inhabitant in the village. Here and there a shut door and
a sickening smell betrayed the fact that some unfortunates had been left
to die untended. Etienne and John Mortimer were for different reasons
unwilling to taste of the ham and bread he had brought back, thinking
that these might convey the contagion, but La Giralda and the Sergeant
laughed their fears to scorn, and together retired to p