en after a toilsome march the party halted in
the grey of the dawn in a tiny dell among the wild mountains of
Guadarrama.

The air was still bleak and cold, though luckily there was no wind.
Concha, the child of the south, shivered a little as Rollo aided her to
dismount, and this must be the young man's excuse for taking his blue
military cloak from its coil across his saddle-bow, and wrapping it
carefully and tenderly about her.

Concha raised her eyes once to his as he fastened its chain-catch
beneath her chin, and Rollo, though the starlight dimmed the brilliance
of the glance, felt more than repaid. In the background Etienne smiled
bitterly. The damsel of the green lattice being now left far behind at
Sarria, he would have had no scruples about returning to his allegiance
to Concha. But the chill indifference with which his advances were
received, joined to something softer and more appealing in her eyes when
she looked at Rollo, warned the much-experienced youth that he had
better for the future confine his gallantries to the most common and
ordinary offices of courtesy.

Yet it was certainly a restraint upon the young Frenchman, who, almost
from the day he had been rid of his Jesuit tutor, had made it a maxim to
make love to the prettiest girl of any company in which he happened to
find himself.

When, therefore, he found himself reduced to a choice between an
inaccessible Concha and La Giralda, riding astride in her leathern
leg-gear and sack-like smock, the youth bethought himself of his
religious duties which he had latterly somewhat neglected; and, being
debarred from earthly love by Concha's insensibility and La Giralda's
ineligibility, it did not cost him a great effort to become for the
nonce the same Brother Hilario who had left the monastery of Montblanch.

So, much to the astonishment of John Mortimer, who moved a little
farther from him, as being a kind of second cousin of the scarlet woman
of the Seven Hills, Etienne pulled out his rosary and, falling on his
knees, betook him to his prayers with vigour and a single mind.

Sergeant Cardono had long ago abandoned all distinctive marks of his
Carlist partisanship and military rank. Moreover, he had acquired, in
some unexplained way, a leathern Montera cap, a short many-buttoned
jacket, a flapped waistcoat of red plush, and leathern small-clothes of
the same sort as those worn by La Giralda. Yet withal there remained
something very remarkable about