"As the saints live," they said, "you are Morano." And they arrested
Rodriguez too.

Now when they began to turn back by the way they had come Rodriguez
began to fear overmuch identification, so he assured la Garda that in
the next village ahead of them were those who would answer all
questions concerning him, as well as being the possessors of the finest
vintage of wine in the kingdom of Spain.

Now it may be that the mention of this wine soothed the anger caused in
the men of la Garda by two denials, or it may be that curiosity guided
them, at any rate they took the road that led away from last night's
sinister shelter, Rodriguez and five of la Garda. Two of them stayed
behind with Morano, undecided as yet which way to take, though looking
wistfully the way that that wine was said to be; and Rodriguez left
Morano to his own devices, in which he trusted profoundly.

Now Rodriguez knew not the name of the next village that they would
come to nor the names of any of the dwellers in it.

Yet he had a plan. As he went by the side of one of the horses he
questioned the rider.

"Can Morano write?" he said. La Garda laughed.

"Can Morano talk Latin?" he said. La Garda crossed themselves, all five
men. And after some while of riding, and hard walking for Rodriguez, to
whom they allowed a hand on a stirrup leather, there came in sight the
tops of the brown roofs of a village over a fold of the plain. "Is this
your village?" said one of his captors.

"Surely," answered Rodriguez.

"What is its name?" said one.

"It has many names," said Rodriguez.

And then another one of them recognised it from the shape of its roofs.
"It is Saint Judas-not-Iscariot," he said.

"Aye, so strangers call it," said Rodriguez.

And where the road turned round that fold of the plain, lolling a
little to its left in the idle Spanish air, they came upon the village
all in view. I do not know how to describe this village to you, my
reader, for the words that mean to you what it was are all the wrong
words to use. "Antique," "old-world," "quaint," seem words with which
to tell of it. Yet it had no antiquity denied to the other villages; it
had been brought to birth like them by the passing of time, and was
nursed like them in the lap of plains or valleys of Spain. Nor was it
quainter than any of its neighbours, though it was like itself alone,
as they had their characters also; and, though no village in the world
was like it, it differed o