t the balance right. Perhaps I may do so yet. But I cannot
be the commander of these men. They are not of my folk or country. They
have not even asked me to lead them. They are jealous of me! You see it
as well as I!"

"Ah!" cried the girl, laying her hand again on his cuff, "that is
because they do not wish you to share their plunder. But tell them that
you care nothing for that and they will welcome you readily enough. The
place is plague-stricken, I tell you. The palace lies open. Little
crook-backed Chepe brought me word. He says he adores me. He is of the
village of Frias, back there behind the hills. I do not love him, even
though he has a bitter heart and can hate well. Therefore I suffer him."

The Sergeant rose to his feet and looked compassionately down at the
vivid little figure before him. The hair, dense and black, the blue
eyes, the red-knotted handkerchief, the white teeth that showed between
the parted lips clean and sharp as those of a wild animal. Cardono had
seen many things on his travels, but never anything like this. His soul
was moved within him. In the deeps of his heart, the heart of a Spanish
gipsy, there was an infinite sympathy for any one who takes up the blood
feud, who, in the face of all difficulties, swears the _vendetta_. But
the slim arms, the spare willowy body, the little white sandalled feet
of the little girl--these overcame him with a pitifully amused sense of
the disproportion of means to end.

"Have you no brother, Senorita?" he said, using by instinct the title of
respect which the little girl loved the most. She saw his point in a
moment.

"A brother--yes, Don Jose! But my brother is a cur, a dog that eats
offal. Pah! I spit upon him. He hath taken favours from the woman. He
hath handled her money. He would clean the shoes they twain leave at
their chamber door. A brother--yes; the back of my hand to such
brothers! But after to-night he shall have no offal to eat--no bones
thrown under the table to pick. For in one slaying I will kill the
Italian woman Cristina, the man Munoz who broke my mother's heart, and
the foisted changeling brat whom they miscall the daughter of Fernando
and the little Queen of Spain!"

She subsided on a stone, dropped her head into her hands, and took no
further notice of the Sergeant, who stood awhile with his hand resting
on her shoulder in deep meditation. There was, he thought, no more to be
said or done. He knew all there was to know. The men