dge of the only Catholic, absolute, and legitimate king.
Then, approaching the precipice as nearly as in the uncertain light he
dared, he cast it from him in the direction of the Carlist lines.

"Shoot whom you will at sunrise, queen or camp-wench, king or knave," he
muttered, "you shall not have Adrian Zumaya of Vitoria to put a bullet
through!"

So easily was allegiance laid down or taken up in these civil wars of
Spain. And that night it was noised abroad through all the camp that
young Zumaya of the Estella regiment of cavalry had taken his horse and
gone off with the pretty _Senorita_ whom he had been set to watch.

Upon which half his comrades envied him, and the other half hoped he
would be captured, saying, "It will be bad for Adrian Zumaya of the
Estella regiment if he comes again within the clutches of our excellent
Don Ramon Cabrera."

And this was a fact of which the aforesaid Adrian himself was
exceedingly well aware. But the most curious point about the whole
matter is that when he awoke late next morning he found the sun shining
brilliantly into the mouth of the cave. The camp had vanished. There was
a haze of sulphur in the air which bit his nostrils, and lo! beneath
him, on a little plot of coarse green grass and hill-plants, a
cream-coloured horse was quietly feeding.

"It is my own Perla!" he cried, as, careless of danger, he hastened
down. There was a red object attached to the mare's bridle. He went
round and detached a red _boina_, to which was pinned a scrap of paper.
Upon it was written these words:

"_I hope you have not missed either of the objects herewith
returned. They served me nobly. I send my best thanks for the
loan.--C. C._"

"That is very well," said the young man, smiling as he mounted his
horse, "but all the same, had my heels not served me better than my
head, your best thanks, pretty mistress, had come too late. They would
not have kept me from biting the dust at sunrise with half a dozen
bullets in my gizzard, instead of waking here comfortably on an empty
stomach. Well, I suppose I must don the cap of liberty now and be a
_chapelgorri_. It is a pity. 'Tis not one half so becoming as the
_boina_ to one of my complexion."

Then Adrian Zumaya, late of the Estella regiment of Carlist horse,
meditated a little longer upon the mutability of all earthly affairs.

"Yet perhaps that is just as well!" he added. "It is ever my hard fate
to lose my head where a woma