wed into his waistcoat, and a
beautiful silk scarf in his wallet, one of those worked by white hands
in the convents of the city. The son of the bell-ringer went with
him. They joined one of the insignificant bands who were devastating
Murcia, but they soon went on to Valencia and Catalonia, anxious to
perform greater exploits for the cause of God than merely stealing
mules and extorting contributions from the rich.

Gabriel felt an intense delight in this wandering life, with its
continual alarms owing to the proximity of the troops.

He had been made an officer at once, on account of his education, and
because of the letters of recommendation that certain of the prebends
of the Metropolitan Church had given him; letters lamenting greatly
that a youth of so much theological promise should go and risk his
life like a simple sacristan.

Luna enjoyed the free and lawless life of war with the zest of a
collegian out of bounds; but he could not hide the feeling of painful
disillusion that the sight of those armies of the Faith caused him.
He had expected to find something akin to the ancient crusading
expeditions: soldiers who fought for an ideal, who bent the knee
before beginning the fight, so that God might be on their side, and
who at night, after a hard-fought field, slept the pure sleep of an
ascetic; instead of which he found an armed mob, mutinous to their
leaders, incapable of that fanaticism which rushes blindfold to death,
anxious only that the war might last as long as possible, so that they
might continue the life of lawless wandering at the expense of the
country, which they considered the best life possible; people who
at the sight of wine, women or plunder would disband themselves,
hungering, turning against their leaders.

It was the ancient life of the horde, surging up through civilisation,
the atavic custom of stealing the stranger's bread and women by force
of arms, the ancient Celtiberic love of factions and internal strife,
that only caught hold of a political pretext in order to revive.

Gabriel, with very rare exceptions, found none in those badly-armed
and worse-clothed bands who fought with a fixed idea; they were
adventurers who wished for war for the sake of war; visionaries
anxious for fortune; country lads from the fields, who in their
passive ignorance had joined the factions, just as they would have
stayed at home if they had had better counsels; simple souls who
firmly believed that i