one would repass till time
should be no more.

Suddenly through the utter quiet there rang out, repeated and
reduplicated, the loud report of a rifle. The hills gave back the
challenge. A moment before the dingy bedrabbled snow at Cardono's feet
had been puffed upwards in a white jet, yet he neither stopped for this
nor took the least notice. Loyal or disloyal, true or false, he was a
brave man this Sergeant Cardono. I dare say that any one close to him
might have discerned his beady eyes glitter and glance quickly from side
to side, but his countenance was turned steadfastly as ever upon the
snow at his feet.

Again came the same startling challenge out of the vague emptiness of
space, the bullet apparently bursting like a bomb among the snow. And
again Cardono took as much notice as if some half-dozen of village
loungers had been playing ball among the trees.

Only when a third time the _whisk_ of the bullet in the snow a yard or
two to the right preceded the sound of the shot, Cardono shook his head
and muttered, "Too long range! The fools ought to be better taught than
that!" Then he continued his tramp steadily, neither looking to the
right nor to the left. The constancy of his demeanour had its effect
upon the unseen enemy. The Sergeant was not further molested; and though
it was obvious that he advanced each step in about as great danger of
death as a man who is marched manacled to the garrote, he might simply
have been going to his evening billet in some quiet Castilian village,
for all the difference it made in his appearance.

Up to this point Cardono had walked directly up the torrent bed, the
rounded and water-worn stones rattling and slipping under his iron-shod
half-boots, but at a certain point where was another rough cairn of
stones, he suddenly diverged to the right, and mounted straight up the
fell over the scented thyme and dwarf juniper of the mountain slopes.

Whatever of uncertainty as to his fate the Sergeant felt was rigidly
concealed, and even when a dozen men dropped suddenly upon him from
various rocky hiding-places, he only shook them off with a quick gesture
of contempt, and said something in a loud voice which brought them all
to a halt as if turned to stone by an enchanter's spell.

The men paused and looked at each other. They were all well armed, and
every man had an open knife in his hand. They had been momentarily
checked by the words of the Sergeant, but now they came on again a