e
road so significant that one needs no destination, that is _lo
flamenco_," said I to Don Diego, as we stood in the glen looking at the
seven white arches of the aqueduct.

He nodded unconvinced.

_III: The Baker of Almorox_

I

The _senores_ were from Madrid? Indeed! The man's voice was full of an
awe of great distances. He was the village baker of Almorox, where we
had gone on a Sunday excursion from Madrid; and we were standing on the
scrubbed tile floor of his house, ceremoniously receiving wine and figs
from his wife. The father of the friend who accompanied me had once
lived in the same village as the baker's father, and bought bread of
him; hence the entertainment. This baker of Almorox was a tall man,
with a soft moustache very black against his ash-pale face, who stood
with his large head thrust far forward. He was smiling with pleasure at
the presence of strangers in his house, while in a tone of shy
deprecating courtesy he asked after my friend's family. Don Fernando
and Dona Ana and the Senorita were well? And little Carlos? Carlos was
no longer little, answered my friend, and Dona Ana was dead.

The baker's wife had stood in the shadow looking from one face to
another with a sort of wondering pleasure as we talked, but at this she
came forward suddenly into the pale greenish-gold light that streamed
through the door, holding a dark wine-bottle before her. There were
tears in her eyes. No; she had never known any of them, she explained
hastily--she had never been away from Almorox--but she had heard so
much of their kindness and was sorry.... It was terrible to lose a
father or a mother. The tall baker shifted his feet uneasily,
embarrassed by the sadness that seemed slipping over his guests, and
suggested that we walk up the hill to the Hermitage; he would show the
way.

"But your work?" we asked. Ah, it did not matter. Strangers did not
come every day to Almorox. He strode out of the door, wrapping a woolen
muffler about his bare strongly moulded throat, and we followed him up
the devious street of whitewashed houses that gave us glimpses through
wide doors of dark tiled rooms with great black rafters overhead and
courtyards where chickens pecked at the manure lodged between smooth
worn flagstones. Still between white-washed walls we struck out of the
village into the deep black mud of the high road, and at last burst
suddenly into the open country, where patches of sprouting grass shone