es back with a party to take us prisoners!--Oh, she wouldn't be so
treacherous; she can't look upon us as enemies. We are not fighting
against her people. But I don't know; they must look upon us as made up
of enemies. No, no, she was only frightened, and no wonder, to find us
in her hut, for it must be hers or her people's. Else she wouldn't have
come here. No, a girl like that, a simple country girl, would only
think of helping two poor lads in distress, and she will come back and
bring us some bread."

As Pen stood watching the place where the girl had disappeared his hand
went involuntarily to his pocket, where he jingled a few _pesetas_ that
he had left; and then, as he canvassed to himself the possibility of the
girl's return before long, he went slowly back into the hut and stood
looking down at the sleeper.

"Bread and milk," he said softly. "It will be like life to him. But
how queer it seems that I should be worrying myself nearly to death,
giving up my clothes to make him comfortable, playing doctor and nurse,
and nearly starving myself, for a boy for whom I never cared a bit. I
couldn't have done any more for him if he had been my brother. Why,
when I used to hear him speak it jarred upon me, he seemed so coarse and
common. It's human nature, I suppose, and I'm not going to doubt that
poor girl again. She looks common and simple too--a Spanish peasant, I
suppose, who had come to milk and see to the goats after perhaps being
frightened away by the firing. A girl of seventeen or eighteen, I
should say. Well, Spanish girls would be just as tender-hearted as ours
at home. Of course; and she did just the same as one of them would have
done. She looked sorry for poor Punch, and I saw one tear trickle over
and fall down.--There, Punch, boy; we shall be all right now if the
French don't come."

Pen stepped out in the open and seated himself upon a piece of mossy
rock where he could gaze in the direction where he had last seen his
visitor. But it was all dull and misty now. There was the distant
murmur of the great fall, the sharp, sibilant chirrup of crickets. The
great planet which had seemed like a friend to him before had risen from
behind the distant mountain, and there was a peculiar sweet, warm
perfume in the air that made him feel drowsy and content.

"Ah," he sighed, "they say that when things are at their worst they
begin to mend. They are mending now, and this valley never felt, never