one's neck!"

They were his last words. And so passed Jose Maria of Ronda, whom to
this day every Spanish peasant holds to have been the greatest man Spain
has seen since the dead Cid rode forth on Babieca for the last time to
outface the Moors.

CHAPTER XLVII

MENDIZABAL

Rollo and his companions rode into Madrid amid the clamour and rejoicing
of thousands, as indeed he might have done behind Don Carlos had he been
successful in his first intention. Madrid was healthy and hungry. The
plague had been stayed by the belt of barren country which cinctures the
capital village of Spain. And as for fear, do not the inhabitants say
that what happens not in Madrid, happens not at all!

Rollo, so long accustomed to the high clear silences of the _sierra_ or
the scarcely less restful valleys where the birds sing all day in the
spring, felt himself closed in and deafened by the clamour, blinded by
the brilliant colours, and in ill-humour with all things--chiefly, it
must be confessed, because Concha, attired by the Queen's own
waiting-maid from Aranjuez, sat in a carriage with the aplomb of a
duchess.

They were all in high favour. For Munoz (now more than ever the Power
behind the Throne, and perhaps secretly proud of having played the man
at the defence of the _barranco_ of Moncayo) had quickly turned the tide
of the Queen-Regent's displeasure. And at this period there was scarcely
any honour that she would not have bestowed upon her preservers.

For in distracted hither-and-thither Spain of the early Carlist wars, it
seemed nothing extraordinary to any one that Rollo should have saved
their Majesties' lives with a Carlist commission in his pocket, or that
Sergeant Cardono of the command of General Cabrera should have been shot
dead by his superior officer while fighting vehemently for the opposite
party. For these are incidents common to most civil wars and specially
common in Spain, that land of adventurous spirits with little to do and
plenty of time in which to do it. Indeed a feather or a favour, the
colour of a riband or the shape of a cap, often made young men Carlist
or Cristino, National or Red Republican, as the case might be.

On the third day after their arrival the privilege of a royal interview
was granted to the young Scot. Rollo smiled as he thought of the first
he had been favoured with, and of that other when he had started off a
cavalcade consisting of two Queens and an outlaw under sentence