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and one of them is coming to see you The poor man had the air of a funeral, this afternoon."

"Ah!" said the girl indifferently. "General Vincente."

Julia changed color, and her eyelids flickered for a moment as she looked out of the open window.

and took his wine as if it were sour. Ah! these civilians, they amuse one; they take life so seriously."

He laughed and looked round on those assembled, as if inviting them to join him in a gayer and easier view of

"A good friend," continued Concha, existence. The padre's furrowed face "but-"

He finished the phrase with an eloquent little gesture of the hand. At this moment they both heard the sound of an approaching carriage.

"He is coming now," said Concha; "he is driving, so Estella is with him." "Estella is, of course, jealous." The priest looked at her with a slow, wise smile, and said nothing.

"She" began Julia, and then closed her lips-true to that esprit de sexe which has ruled through all the ages. Then Julia Barenna gave a sharp sigh as her mind reverted from Estella's affairs to her own.

Sitting thus in silence, the two occupants of the quiet room heard the approach of steps and the clink of spurs in the corridor.

"It is the reverendo who visits the señorita," they heard the voice of the sentinel explain deprecatingly.

answered the summons in a sudden smile, but it was with grave eyes that he looked searchingly at the most powerful man in Andalusia, for General Vincente's word was law south of the Tagus.

The two men sat side by side in strong contrast. Fate, indeed, seems to shake men together in a bag and cast them out upon the world, heedless where they may fall for here was a soldier in the priest's habit, and one carrying a sword who had the keen heart and sure sympathy for joy or sorrow that should ever be found within a black coat if the Master's work is to be well done.

General Vincente smiled at Estella with sang froid and an unruffled good nature, while the Padre Concha, whose place it surely was to take the lead in such woman's work as this, slowly rubbed his bony hands together at a loss and incompetent to meet the ur

The priest rose and went to the door, gency of the moment. which he opened.

"Our guest left us yesterday morn

"Only as a friend," he said. "Come ing," said the general, "and of course in, general." the alcalde placed no hindrance on his departure."

General Vincente entered the room, followed by Estella. He nodded to Concha and kissed his niece affectionately.

"Still obdurate?" he said, with a semiplayful tap on her shoulder. "Still obdurate? My dear Julia, in peace and war the greatest quality in the strong is mercy. You have proved yourself strong-you have worsted that unfortunate alcalde-be merciful to him now, and let this incident finish."

He drew forward a chair, the others being seated, and laid aside his gloves. The sword which he held upright between his knees, with his two hands resting on the hilt, looked incongruously large and reached the level of his eyes. He gave a little chuckling laugh.

"I saw him last night at the Café Real.

He did not look at Julia, who drew a deep breath and glanced at Estella.

"I do not know if Señor Conyngham left any message for you with Estella, to me he said nothing," continued Estella's father; and that young lady shook her head.

"No," she put in composedly.

"Then it remains for us to close this foolish incident, my dear Julia, and for me to remind you, seeing you are fatherless, that there are in Spain many adventurers who come here seeking the sport of love or war, who will ride away when they have had their fill of either.

He ceased speaking with a tolerant laugh, as one who, being a soldier himself, would beg indulgence for the fail

ings of his comrades, examined the hilt of his sword, and then looked blandly round on three faces which refused to class the absent Englishman in this category.

"It remains, my dear niece, to satisfy the alcalde, a mere glance at the letter-sufficient to satisfy him as to the nature of its contents."

"I have no letter," said Julia quietly, with her level red lips set firmly.

"Not in your possession, but perhaps concealed in some place at hand, unless it is destroyed."

"I have destroyed no letter, I have concealed no letter, and I have no letter," said the girl quietly.

Estella moved uneasily in her chair. Her face was colorless and her eyes shone. She watched her cousin's face intently, and beneath his shaggy brows the old priest's eyes went from one fair countenance to the other.

"Then," cried the general, rising to his feet with an air of relief, "you have but to assure the alcalde of this, and the whole incident is terminated-blown over, my dear Concha-blown over."

He tapped the priest on the shoulder with great good-nature. Indeed, the world seemed sunny enough and free from cares when General Vincente had to deal with it.

"Yes, yes," said the padre, snuff-box in hand; "blown over, of course."

"Then I may send the alcalde to you, Julia, and you will tell him what you have told us. He cannot but take the word of a lady."

The sun had set, and in the hollows of the distant mountains the shades of night already lay like a blue veil.

The priest walked on and presently reached the highroad.

A single figure was upon it, the figure of a man sitting in the shadow of an ilex-tree, half a mile up the road toward Bobadilla. The man crouched low against a heap of stones, and had the air of a wanderer. His face was concealed in the folds of his cloak.

"Blown over," muttered the padre, as he turned his back upon Bobadilla and went on toward his church-"blown over, of course, but what is Concepcion Vara doing in the neighborhood of Ronda to-night?"

CHAPTER XII.

ON THE TOLEDO ROAD. "Une bonne intention est une échelle trop courte."

Conyngham made his way without difficulty or incident from Xeres to Cordova, riding for the most part in front of the clumsy diligencia, wherein he had bestowed his luggage. The road was wearisome enough, and the last stages, through the fertile plains bordering the Guadalquivir, dusty and monotonous.

At Cordova the traveller found comfortable quarters in an old inn overlooking the river. The ancient city was then, as it is now, a great military centre, and the headquarters of the picturesque corps of horsetamers, the Remonta, who are responsible for the mounting of a cavalry, and the artillery of Spain. Conyngham had, at the suggestion of General Vincente, made such small changes in his costume as would serve to allay curiosity and prevent that gossip of the stable and kitchen which may follow a traveller to his hurt With a laugh and a nod he went from one side of a continent to the toward the door.

"Yes, if you like," answered Julia. The general's joy knew no bounds. "That is well," he cried. "I knew we could rely upon your good sense. Kiss me, Julia; that is well. Come, Estella, we must not keep the horses waiting."

"Blown over, my dear Concha." he said, over his shoulder.

A few minutes later the priest walked down the avenue of walnut-trees alone. The bell was ringing for Vespers, but the padre was an autocratic shepherd, and did not hurry toward his flock.

other.

"Wherever you may go, learn your way in and out of every town, and you will thus store up knowledge most useful to a soldier," the general had said in his easy way.

"See you," Concepcion had observed, wagging his head over a cigarette, "to

go about the world with the eyes open valley of the Alcadia to Ciudad Real, is to conquer the world." Toledo, and Madrid.

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Here Conyngham wandered, or else he sat somnolently on a seat in the Paseo del Gran Capitan, in the shade of the orange-trees, awaiting the arrival of Concepcion Vara. He made a few acquaintances, as every traveller who is not a bear must needs do in a country where politeness and hospitality and a grave good fellowship are the natural habit of high and low alike. A bullfighter or two, who beguiled the long winter months when the rings are closed by a little innocent horse-dealing, joined him quietly in the streets, and offered him a horse, as between gentlemen of undoubted honor, at a price much below the current value. Or it was, perhaps, a beggar who came to him on the old yellow marble seat under the orange-trees, and chatted affably about his business as being bad in these times of war. Once, indeed, it was a white-haired gentleman who spoke in English, and asked some very natural questions as to the affairs that brought an Englishman to the town of Cordova. This sweet-spoken old man explained that strangers would do well to avoid all questions of politics and religion, which he classed together in one dangerous whole. Nevertheless Conyngham thought that he perceived his ancient friend the same evening hurrying up the steps of the Jesuit College of La Campania. Two days elapsed and Concepcion Vara made neither appearance nor sign. On the second evening Conyngham decided to go on alone, prosecuting his journey through the sparsely populated

"You will ride," the innkeeper told him, "from the Guadalquivir to the Guadiana, and if there is rain you may be a month upon the road."

Conyngham set out in the early morning, and as he threw his leg across the saddle the sun rose over the far misty hills of Ronda, and Concepcion Vara awoke from his night's rest under the wall of an olive terrace above the Bobadilla road, to begin another day of patient waiting and watching to get speech with the maid or the mistress, for he had already inaugurated what he lightly called "an affair" with Julia's flighty attendant. The sun rose also over the plains of Xeres, and lighted up the picturesque form of Esteban Larralde, in the saddle this hour and more, having learnt that Colonel Monreal's death took place an hour before Conyngham's arrival in the town of Xeres de la Frontera. The letter, therefore, had not been delivered to Colonel Monreal, and was still in Conyngham's possession.

Larralde bestrode a shocking steed, and had but an indifferent seat in the saddle, but the dust rose beneath his horse's feet, and his spurs flashed in the sunlight as this man of many parts hurried on toward Utera and Cordova. In the old Moorish palace in Ronda, General Vincente, summoned to a great council of war at Madrid, was making curt military preparations for his journey and the conveyance of his household to the capital. Señora Barenna was for the moment forgetful of her nerves in the excitement of despatching servants in advance to Toledo, where she owned a summer residence. Julia was nervously anxious to be on the road again, and showed by every word and action that restlessness of spirit which is the inheritance of hungry hearts. Estella. quiet and self-contained, attended to the details of moving a vast and formal household with a certain eagerness, which in no way resembled Julia's feverish haste. Estella seemed to be one of those happy people who know what they want.

Thus Frederick Conyngham, riding northward alone, seemed to be but a pilot to all those persons, into whose lives he had suddenly stepped as from a side issue, for they were one and all making ready to follow him to the colder plains of Castile, where existence was full of strife and ambition, of war and those inner wheels that ever jar and grind where politicians contend together for the mastery of a moment.

As he rode on, Conyngham left a message from time to time for his selfappointed servant. At the offices of the diligencias in various towns on the great road from Cordova to Madrid he left word for Concepcion Vara to follow, should the spirit of travel be still upon him, knowing that at these places, where travellers were ever passing, the tittle-tattle of the road was on the tongue of every hostler and stable help. And truly enough there followed one who made careful inquiries as to the movements of the Englishman, and heard his messages with a grim smile; but this was not Concepcion Vara.

It was late one evening when Conyngham, who had quitted Toledo in the morning, began to hunger for the sight of the towers and steeples of Madrid. He had ridden all day through the bare country of Cervantes, where to this day Spain rears her wittiest men and plainest women. The sun had just set behind the distant hills of old Castile, and from the east, over Aranjuez, where the great river cuts Spain in two parts, from its centre to the sea, a grey cloud -a very shade of night-was slowly rising. The aspect of the brown plains was dismal, and on the horizon the rolling, unbroken land seemed to melt away into eternity and infinite space. Conyngham reined in and looked around him. So far as eye could reach no house arose to testify to the presence of man. No laborer toiled home to his lonely hut, for in this country of many wars and interminable strife it has, since the days of Nebuchadnezzar, been the custom of the people to congregate in villages and small townships, where a common danger secured some protection against a lawless foe. The road

rose and fell in a straight line across the tableland without tree or hedge, and Madrid seemed to belong to another world, for the horizon, which was distant enough, bore no sign of cathedral spire or castled height.

Conyngham turned in his saddle to look back, and there, not a mile away, the form of a hurrying horseman broke the bare line of the dusty road. There was something weird and disturbing in this figure, a suggestion of pursuit in every line, for this was not Concepcion Vara. Conyngham would have known him at once. This was one wearing a better coat; indeed, Concepcion preferred to face life and the chances of the road in shirt-sleeves.

Conyngham sat in his saddle awaiting the newcomer. To meet on such a road in Spain without pausing to exchange a salutation would be a gratuitous insult; to ride in solitude within hail of another traveller were to excite or betray the deepest distrust. It was characteristic of Conyngham that he already waved his hand in salutation, and was prepared to hail the newcomer as the jolliest companion in the world.

Esteban Larralde, seeing the salutation, gave a short laugh, and jerked the reins of his tired horse. He himself wore a weary look, as if the flight he had in hand were an uphill one. He had long recognized Conyngham; indeed, the chase had been one of little excitement, but rather an exercise of patience and dogged perseverance. He raised his hat to indicate that the Englishman's gay salutations were perceived, and pulled the wide brim. well forward again.

"He will change his attitude when it becomes apparent who I am," he muttered.

But Conyngham's first word would appear to suggest that Esteban Larralde was a much less impressive person than he considered himself.

"Why, it's the devout lover!" he cried. "Señor Larralde, you remember me-Algeciras-and your pink loveletter. Deuced fishy love-letter that. Nearly got me into a devil of a row, I can tell you. How are you-eh?"

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And the Englishman rode forward ognize the necessity of quarrelling, but with a jolly laugh and his hand held proposed to do so as light-heartedly as out. Larralde took it without en- possible. They were both on horseback thusiasm. It was rather difficult to pick in the middle of the road, Larralde a a picturesque quarrel with such a per- few paces in the direction of Madrid. son as this. Moreover, the true con- Conyngham indicated the road with spirator never believes in another man's an inviting wave of the hand. honesty. "Will you go on?" he asked. Larralde sat looking at him with glittering eyes and said nothing.

"Who would have expected to meet you here?" went on Conyngham jovially.

"Then I will continue my journey,"

"It is not as surprising as you think." said the Englishman, touching his horse "Ah!"

There was no mistaking Larralde's manner, and the Englishman's gay, blue eyes hardened suddenly and rather surprisingly.

"No; I have followed you. I want that letter."

"Well, as it happens, Señor Larralde, I have not got your letter, and if I had I am not quite sure that I would give it to you. Your conduct in the matter has not been over nice; and to tell the truth, I don't think much of a man who gets strangers and women to do his dirty work for him."

lightly with the spur. The horse moved on and passed within a yard of the other. At this moment Larralde rose in his stirrups and flung himself on one side.

Conyngham gave a sharp cry of pain and threw back his head. Larralde had stabbed him in the back.

The Englishman swayed in the saddle, as if trying to balance himself; his legs bent back from the knee in the sharpness of a biting pain. The heavy stirrups swung free. Then, slowly, Conyngham toppled forward and rolled out of the saddle, falling on to the road

Larralde stroked his moustache with with a thud. a half-furtive air of contempt.

"I should have given the confounded letter to the alcalde of Ronda if it had not been that a lady would have suffered for it, and let you take your chance, Señor Larralde."

Larralde shrugged his shoulders. "You would not have given it to the alcalde of Ronda," he said in a sneering voice, "because you want it yourself. You require it in order to make your peace with Estella Vincente."

"We are not going to talk of Señorita Vincente," said Conyngham quietly. "You say you followed me because you wanted that letter. It is not in my possession. I left it in the house of Colonel Monreal at Xeres.

If you are going on to Madrid, I think I will sit down here and have a cigarette. If, on the other hand, you propose resting here, I shall proceed, as it is getting late."

Conyngham looked at his companion with a nod and a smile, which was not in the least friendly and at the same time quite cheerful. He seemed to rec

Larralde watched him with a white face and staring eyes. Then he looked quickly round over the darkening landscape. There was no one in sight. This was one of the waste places of the world. Larralde seemed to remember the Eye that seeth even there, and crossed himself as he slipped from the saddle to the ground. He was shaking all over. His face was ashen, for it is a terrible thing to kill a man and be left alone with him.

Conyngham's eyes were closed. There was blood on his lips. With hands that shook like leaves Esteban Larralde searched the Englishman, found nothing, and cursed his ill-fortune. Then he stood upright, and in the dim light his face shone as if he had dipped it in water. He crept into the saddle, and rode on toward Madrid.

It was quite dark when Conyngham recovered consciousness. In turning him over to search his pockets Larralde had perhaps, unwittingly, saved his life by placing him in a position that checked the internal hemorrhage.

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