rse was essentially a means of
transport, and all other animals were looked at in a like utilitarian
spirit.

In every village he found a friend. As often as not he was the first to
bring the news of war to a people who have scarcely known peace these
hundred years. The teller of news cannot help telling with his tidings
his own view of them; and Evasio Mon made it known that in his opinion
all who had a grievance could want no better opportunity of airing it.

Thus he traveled slowly through the country towards Montserrat; and
wherever his slight, black-clad form and serene face had passed, the
spirit of unrest was left behind. In remote Aragonese villages, as in
busy Catalan towns where the artisan (that disturber of ancient peace)
was already beginning to add his voice to things of Spain, Evasio Mon
always found a hearing.

Needless to say he found in every village Venta, in every Posada of the
towns, that which is easy to find in this babbling world--a talker.

And Evasio Mon was a notable listener.

CHAPTER VI

PILGRIMS
It is not often that nature takes the trouble to stir the heart of man
into any emotion stronger than a quiet admiration or a peaceful wonder.
Here and there on the face of the earth, however, the astonishing work of
God gives pause to the most casual observer, the most thoughtless
traveler.

"Why did He do this?" one wonders. And no geologist--not even a French
geologist with his quick imagination and lively sense of the
picturesque--can answer the question.

On first perceiving the sudden, uncouth height of Montserrat the traveler
must assuredly ask in his own mind, "Why?"

The mountain is of granite, where no other granite is. It belongs to no
neighbouring formation. It stands alone, throwing up its rugged peaks
into a cloudless sky. It is a piece from nothing near it---from nothing
nearer, one must conclude, than the moon. No wonder it stirred the
imagination of mediaeval men dimly groping for their God.

Ignatius de Loyola solved the question with that unbounded assurance
which almost always accompanies the greatest of human blunders. It is the
self-confident man who compasses the finest wreck, Loyola, wounded in the
defense of that strongest little city in Europe, Pampeluna--wounded,
alas! and not killed--jumped to the conclusion that God had reared up
Montserrat as a sign. For it was here that the Spanish soldier, who was
to mould the history of half the world, dedicated hi