f La Giralda's oaken cudgel
on the stout door panels. Accordingly she stepped within, and without
ceremony ascended the stairs. In the house-place, extended on a bed, lay
a woman of her own age, dead, her face wearing an expression of the
utmost agony.

In a low trundle-bed by the side of the other was a little girl of four.
Her hands clasped a doll of wood tightly to her bosom. But her eyes,
though open, were sightless. She also was dead.

La Giralda turned and came down the stairs, shaking her head mournfully.

"These at least are ours," she said, when she came out into the hot
summer air, pointing to the little flock of goats. "There is none to
hinder us."

"Have the owners fled?" asked the Sergeant, quickly.

"There are some of them upstairs now," she replied, "but, alas, none who
will ever reclaim them from us! The excuse is the best that can be
devised to introduce us into San Ildefonso, and, perhaps, if we have
luck, inside the palisades of La Granja also."

So without further parley the Sergeant proceeded, in the most
matter-of-fact way possible, to load the ass with huge fagots of
kindling wood till the animal showed only four feet paddling along under
its burden, and a pair of patient orbs, black and beady like those of
the Sergeant himself, peering out of a hay-coloured matting of hair.

This done, the Sergeant turned his sharp eyes every way about the dim
smoky horizon. He could note, as easily as on a map, the precise notch
in the many purple-tinted gorges where they had left their party. It was
exactly like all the others which slit and dimple the slopes of the
Guadarrama, but in this matter it was as impossible for the Sergeant to
make a mistake as for a town-dweller to err as to the street in which he
has lived for years.

But no one was watching them. No clump of juniper held a spy, and the
Sergeant was at liberty to develop his plans. He turned quickly upon the
old gipsy woman.

"La Giralda," he said, "there is small use in discovering the
disposition of the courtiers in San Ildefonso--ay, or even the defences
of the palace, if we know nothing of the Romany who are to march
to-night upon the place."

La Giralda, who had been drawing a little milk from the udders of each
she-goat, to ease them for their travel, suddenly sprang erect.

"I do not interfere in the councils of the Gitano," she cried; "I am
old, but not old enough to desire death!"

But more grim and lack-lustre than ever, the