rs schemed without let or hindrance.

"So long as he is away we need not be uneasy about Juanita," said Marcos.
"He cannot return to Saragossa without my hearing of it."

And one evening a casual teamster from the North, whose great two-wheeled
cart, as high as a house and as long as a locomotive, stood in the dusty
road outside the Posada de los Reyes, dropped in, cigarette in mouth, to
the Palacio Sarrion. In Spain, a messenger delivers neither message nor
letter to a servant. A survival of mediaeval habits permits the humblest
to seek the presence of the great at any time of day.

The Sarrions had just finished dinner and still sat in the vast
dining-room, the walls of which glittered with arms and loomed darkly
with great portraits of the Spanish school of painting.

The teamster was not abashed. It was a time of war, and war is a great
leveler of social scales. He had brought his load through a disturbed
country. He was a Guipuzcoan--as good as any man.

"It was about the Senor Mon," he said. "You wished to hear of him. He
returned to Pampeluna two days ago."

The teamster thanked their Excellencies, but he could not accept their
hospitality because he had ordered his supper at his hotel. It was only
at the Posada de los Reyes in all Saragossa that one procured the real
cuisine of Guipuzcoa. Yes, he would take a glass of wine.

And he took it with a fine wave of the arm, signifying that he drank to
the health of his host.

"Evasio Mon will not leave us long idle," said Sarrion, when the man had
gone, and he had hardly spoken when the servant ushered in a second
visitor, a man also of the road, who handed to Marcos a crumpled and
dirty envelope. He had nothing to say about it, so bowed and withdrew. He
was a man of the newer stamp, for he was a railway worker, having that
which is considered a better manner. He knew his place, and that
knowledge had affected his manhood.

The letter he gave to Marcos bore no address. It was sealed, however, in
red wax, which had the impress of Nature's seal, a man's thumb--unique
and not to be counterfeited.

From the envelope Marcos took a twisted paper, not innocent of carded
wool.

"We are going back to Saragossa," Juanita wrote. "I have refused to go
into religion, but they say it is too late; that I cannot draw back now.
Is this true?"

Marcos passed the note across to his father.

"I wish this was Barcelona," he said, with a sudden gleam in his grave
eyes.

"