ner, whose bright eyes stimulated all his capacities as
narrator, and whose bright smile welcomed every hairbreadth escape with
a joy which Rollo could not but feel must somehow be heartfelt and
personal. Besides, adventures sound so well when told in Spanish and to
a Spanish girl.

Yet, strange as it may seem, the young man missed several opportunities
of arousing the compassion of his companion.

He said not a word about Peggy Ramsay, nor did he mention the broken
heart which he had come so far afield to cure. And as for Concha,
nothing could have been more nunlike and conventual than the expression
with which she listened. It was as if one of the Lady Superior's
"Holiest Innocents" had flown over the nunnery wall and settled down to
listen to Rollo's tale in that wild gorge among the mountains of
Guadarrama.

* * * * *

Meantime the Sergeant and his gipsy companion pursued their way with
little regard to the occupations or sentiments of those they had left
behind them. Cardono's keen black eyes, twinkling hither and thither, a
myriad crows' feet reticulating out from their corners like spiders'
webs, took in the landscape, and every object in it.

The morning was well advanced when, right across their path, a
well-to-do farmhouse lay before them, white on the hillside, its walls
long-drawn like fortifications, and the small slit-like windows
counterfeiting loopholes for musketry. But instead of the hum of work
and friendly gossip, the crying of ox-drivers yoking their teams, or
adjusting the long blue wool over the patient eyes of their beasts,
there reigned about the place, both dwelling and office-houses, a
complete and solemn silence. Only in front of the door several
she-goats, with bunching, over-full udders, waited to be milked with
plaintive whimperings and tokens of unrest.

La Giralda looked at her companion. The Sergeant looked at La Giralda.
The same thought was in the heart of each.

La Giralda went up quickly to the door, and knocked loudly. At
farmhouses in Old Castile it is necessary to knock loudly, for the
family lives on the second floor, while the first is given up to bundles
of fuel, trusses of hay, household provender of the more indestructible
sort, and one large dog which invariably answers the door first and
expresses in an unmistakable manner his intention of making his
breakfast off the stranger's calves.

But not even the dog responded to the clang o