The dark face sparkled at sight of the money, and tactfully I explained that my principal interest centred in a young guest of the Duchess's. Any person who could take word from me to her, unknown to others, would be well rewarded. I should not think five hundred pesetas too much, to give for such a service.

A hint was enough. In an instant the girl became a woman of business and a mistress of intrigue. She would not, she said, dare attempt to deliver a note. It would be simpler, less dangerous for all concerned, to be at work in a corridor through which the English senorita must pass; to murmur a few words which would attract her attention; to receive a verbal message in return; and to bring it to me when she could—not to-day; that would be impossible; but to-morrow evening about nine, at which time she had already permission to go out.

Should I trust her? Her face was one to inspire a man's admiration rather than trust, but I had no alternative. If I surrendered this chance, I should hardly find another as promising; and as I must depend upon someone in Carmona's house, why not upon this woman? The bribe I offered was tempting enough to keep her true, if anything could.

I hesitated no more than a moment in accepting her amendment of my proposal, since she assured me it was impossible to make an appointment sooner. And the message I sent Monica was cautiously worded.

The friends who had seen her last in the cathedral of Seville were anxious to see her again, and begged that she would arrange to meet them as soon as possible, to carry out the plan which had been interrupted.

The girl repeated these words after me, promised to remember them and give me the answer to-morrow night at nine, in case any message were entrusted to her. We were not to meet at the same place, however, but on the Alhambra Hill, in the road leading up from the "Wasinton" (as she called the hotel) to the Carmen de Mata Moros. She had a brother living not far from there, she said, whom she expected to visit the following evening. I offered half the money in advance as an incentive to loyalty, and it was accepted with dignity. Then, when we were parting, I asked if one could see into the palace patio from the Alhambra, which towered above us on the height.

"From the middle window of the Sala de Ambajadores the senor will find himself able to see very well," she answered. "And there is still another patio, into which there is a better view from the gardens of the Generalife. Certainly the gardens are very high and far; but if the senor has a spy-glass of some sort? And if he chooses I can try to tell the young lady that he will be first in one place, then in the other, hoping for a sight of her. Let us say, in the afternoon between four and six at the Alhambra; after that, at the Generalife, till the sun is gone."

This neat plan was worth an extra twenty-five peseta note, and I gave it. Afterwards, having no other personal affairs to distract my attention, I wandered through the streets of Granada and into the chill cathedral before going up to make acquaintance with the Carmen de Mata Moros.

When I had seen the villa, with its enchanting terraced garden, hanging on the hillside high above the Vega, a wild hope blazed within me that I might snatch Monica, persuade the English Consul to marry us, and keep her here for the honeymoon, flaunting my happiness in Carmona's face. Of course the idea was fantastic, but it gave me a few moments of happiness.

I lunched in the garden under the thick shade of nisperos trees, and before the time agreed upon I started to walk to the Alhambra.

Not for worlds would I have taken a guide to show the way. All my life, since the days when my mother told me legends of treasure hidden and Moorish warriors enchanted, the Alhambra had been a fairy dream to me. There was no one in the world, save only Monica, whose company I would have craved for this expedition. Other people's thoughts and impressions of the place might be better than mine, but I did not want to hear them; I wanted only my own.

Under the huge leaning elms, which people who trust guide-books attribute to Wellington, I wandered until I came to a great red tower, with a horseshoe arch for entrance. There on the keystone was the carved hand; beyond, over the arch within, the key; and remembering the legend that never would disaster come until the Hand had grasped the Key, I knew that this must be the Gate of Justice.

Now, a spell fell upon me. It was as if the Hand had come down to touch me on the shoulder, and give the Key to hidden wonders, which only I might be allowed to see. That was the fiction with which I pleased myself; for he who comes to the most famous of places is as truly a discoverer as he who finds a new world. No matter how much he has read, how many faithful photographs seen, he must discover everything anew, since it is certain that nowhere will he find anything more than he has within himself. The picture he sees will fit the frame his mind can give, and no one ever has, no one ever will, see there exactly what he sees. If a man's mind cannot create a beautiful frame, then the picture must have but a poor effect for him, and he will go away belittling it.

Now, I believed that I had been making a fine jewelled frame for this picture of the Alhambra, and I hoped that I deserved the Key which the Hand had lent.

Inside the gateway, when I had climbed a winding lane, I found myself in the great Place of the Cisterns, which, with the vast incongruous palace half finished by Charles the Fifth, I recognized from many pictures; but not yet would I look down over Granada and the Vega. I would wait until I could stand at a window in the Hall of the Ambassadors and see what I had been promised. So, without a glance over the parapet, I walked on to an open door, where stood two or three men in gold-laced hats. One moved resignedly forward to act as guide, but a word and a piece of silver convinced him that I was a person who might be trusted alone, though I lacked a student's ticket.

I passed through the room devoted to officialdom, and then—the time had come to use the key, for I was already in fairyland; the covers of the "Arabian Nights" had closed on me, and shut me in between the pages.

Physically I was not alone; for there were faded and strident tourists in the marble-paved court of the Alberca, whom I fain would have had stopped outside and put into appropriate costume for fairyland; but spiritually I had the place to myself.

The little glittering fish, like tropical flowers under green glass, flashed towards me through the beryl water, just as ancestor fish had flashed when jewelled hands of harem beauties crumbled cake into the gleaming tank. My mother had told me a legend, that fair favourites of banished sultans prayed to return after death to the Alhambra, in the bronze and gold, rose and purple forms of these fish of the Alberca; and now I half believed the story. Where—since Mahomet grants no heaven to women—could they be happier than here? Floating ever under their roof of emerald, did they think themselves more fortunate than their husbands, lovers, and brothers permitted to rest within the Alhambra walls in the guise of martens wailing shrilly for days that might not come again?

Dreaming, I passed into the Court of Lions, where I and the twelve quaint, stone guardians of the place stared at one another across a few feet of marble pavement that measured centuries. Each prim beast, beautiful because of his crude hideousness differing from his fellows; each with a different story to tell if he would. Which one remembered that night when the brave Abencerrages faced death, there in the hall to the right, where the fountain kept ominous stains of brown? Which had the seeing eye in these fallen times, to watch when the ghost of those noble Moors passed by silent and sad in the moonlight? Upon which had blood-drops spattered when the boy princes died for jealous Fatima's pleasure? Which had known the touch of Morayma's little hand or lovely Galiana's?

I asked the questions; yet the deep answering silence of the court, and of all this hidden, secret, fairy palace seemed to say so much that it was not like silence, but reserve.

"The Alhambra is music and colour and knowledge," I said to the lions. "When I am gone I shall shut my eyes and hear as well as see it; hear the magic music of the silence, played on silver lutes of Moors, and tinkling fountains, a siren's song to draw me back again; and I shall know and feel things which I've never been able to think out quite clearly before."

Would Monica come here? I wondered. No face more lovely than hers had ever looked down from those latticed windows supported by pillars delicate as a child's white arm. If I could but see her face now! Not seeing it, I knew that no place, however beautiful, could be perfect for me. Shadows of sorrow, of separation, would stand out the blacker against the sunlit, jewelled walls of the fairy palace; and even happiness must sing in minor notes here, lest it strike out a discord in the tragic poem of the Alhambra. No wonder, in losing their crown jewel, the Moors lost hope, and with it all the art and science which had set them far above their Christian rivals! No wonder they plunged, despairing, into the deserts they had left, mingling among savage races as some bright spring mingles with a dark subterranean river, never to glitter in the light again.

But none of my day dreams cheated me into losing count of time.

If my messenger were true, soon Monica would be in one of the patios of Carmona's palace, looking up at the Alhambra towers. "The middle window as you go into the Hall of the Ambassadors," I repeated, and found my way back through the court of the Alberca; for you do not need to know the Alhambra to find your way from sala to sala, seen a hundred times in imagination.

So beautiful had I guessed that room above all others, that I had not expected to be surprised; yet I was surprised, and oddly excited, for supreme beauty is always exciting to the Latin mind. A vast bower of jewels, and old point-lace embroidered with tarnished gold threads and yellowing pearls, it seemed; its portals lace-curtained too; rich hanging folds of lace and fringe, like the lifted drapery of a sultan's tent, supported on delicate poles of polished ivory.

Behind me was the beryl block of the fish-pond, set in silver instead of marble by the sunshine in the court. Before me, across the pink-jewelled dusk of the Sala de los Ambajadores, a blue and green picture of sky and mountains was framed by lace and precious stones.

I walked to the middle window and looked sheer down over tall tree-tops to the valley of the Darro, where the roofs of the Albaicin clustered together, softly grey and glistening as the ruffled plumage of nestling birds.

Far away to the left lay the Vega, shimmering under a mist of heat, which gave the look of a crystal sea engulfing the plain, trees and scattered villages gleaming through the transparent flood. Straight before my eyes, on the cactus-clothed shoulder of a hill opposite the tower, glittered a splash of whitewash dotted with black holes, which were the doors and windows of gypsy caverns. And above me, to the right on a higher hillside, rose the towers and miradores of that ancient "summer palace of delights," the Generalife.

One sweeping glance gave me these details; then, adjusting the field-glass I had brought, I fixed my attention on a house near the Albaicin, which I easily identified as Carmona's palace.

Gazing down from such a height, I had a bird's-eye view of double patios thick with clustering shrubs, orange trees, and cypresses. The powerful glasses brought out clearly the delicate marble pillars supporting the Moorish archways of the upper gallery in one of these patios; but the other was shrouded for me by a group of cypresses.

For a long time I waited—hours it seemed; but no one moved along the gallery or appeared in the half-shuttered windows that looked down into the court; and at last I decided to try the gardens of the Generalife, which I had been told commanded the second patio.

Once, said legend, a prince had been secluded by his father in those gardens and those towers, lest he see the face of a woman, and learn sorrow through love; nevertheless, he had found out the great secret, and had had news of the most beautiful lady in the world. I hoped, as I walked along the avenue of cypresses, that I might be as fortunate; and in the gardens all things spoke of love. There, under the giant cypress, the handsome Abencerrage had come to keep the tryst which cost his head, and thirty-five others as noble. There, at the top of that shaded flight of stone steps, whose balustrades were jewelled with running water, Prince Ahmed had sat to play his lute. From that arcaded balcony Zorayda had looked when love was young, and Boabdil still the lover. In the mirrors of the water-patio Galiana had bent to her own image and asked, "Am I worthy to be loved?"

Out of the tangle of red and white roses, bunched in with golden oranges and scented blooms mingling together in one huge bouquet, I looked to find my love. It was true, I could see clearly now into the cypress patio; and suddenly a white figure came out from a window upon the gallery. The glass at my eye, I thought I recognized Monica's slender girlishness; but a moment later a larger form appeared. The two women stood together looking up, Lady Vale-Avon pointing towards the towers of the Alhambra or the Generalife.

Was it possible she saw me? Yet no, she could not without glasses. But if Monica had indeed been told where I would be at a certain time, could she not have contrived some means to elude her mother and come to the balcony alone?

Long after the two vanished I lingered; waited until sunset; waited until the sky was flooded with rose and gold, and towers and hills were purple in a violet mist. But Monica did not come again.

If she had not been given the message, what guarantee had I that she would receive the other far more important?

It was in a fever of uncertainty that I must spend the next four-and-twenty hours.



XXXVII

DREAMS AND AN AWAKENING

That night, in my villa above "the road of the great Moor-killing," the nightingales were the only serenos. Their song was the song of the stars; and the song of the stars was the song of the nightingales. At dawn, from my window, I was taken into the private life of my neighbour birds. I heard them wake each other; I saw them make their toilets; and from the town far below my terraced garden the sound of bells came up—church bells, bells of mules and horses beginning work, while their masters sang coplas with a lilting Moorish wail.

Once again I went down to look at Carmona's door, to find it still kept by guardia civile; and most of the day I spent in the Alhambra, seeing rooms and courts I had missed yesterday, looking down often into the patio of the palace in the Albaicin.

I dined in the hotel garden, and before nine I was at the appointed spot in the road outside the high wall of my Carmen. The moments passed as I walked up and down, my cigarette a spot of fire in the growing moonlight; still the gypsy-faced girl did not come.

Twenty minutes late, said my watch, and as I stared at it, a man stopped in front of me.

"Is the noble senor expecting someone?" he asked.

I put my watch away and looked at him. The moon, obscured though it was by clouds, showed a tall figure, with strong shoulders, and a face which seemed in the night as dark as a Moor's. The man had lifted his hat from his thick black hair, and I said to myself that he was a model for an artist who wished to paint a gypsy.

Finding that I did not answer on the instant, he went on—

"The senor must forgive me if I have made a mistake; but my sister, who had an errand to do for a gentleman, has sent me in her place."

"In that case you have made no mistake," I said. "You have a message for me from your sister?"

"And from a lady. The message is, that if the senor will come to my house in an hour, he will find what he seeks."

My blood quickened.

"What do I seek?"

"A lady who loves you, and has sent you this through my sister."

The man produced a tiny white paper packet which I took, but would not open in his presence.

"Do you mean that the lady will, meet me at your house—to-night?" I asked.

"She hopes it, for there is no other place or way. My sister will bring the lady; but it is not a house, in your way of speaking, senor. It is a cave in the hillside which I have made my home, for I am a gitano."

"You live above the Albaicin, in the gypsy quarter, then?" I said.

"No, senor, nearer here than that. You must have seen, if you have walked about the neighbourhood, that there are many other caves which honeycomb the hillsides. To find mine you must go towards the cemetery, take the first turn to the right, follow the winding road which descends, then up a rough path, and stop at the first of the three gypsy caves. I must not wait for you, as I have to see that my sister and the lady arrive safely. But you cannot miss the place; and if I am not waiting at the door, open it without knocking and walk in. Is that understood, senor?"

"Yes," I said.

"Then I will go to watch for my sister near the palace. At half-past ten, senor."

"At half-past ten." I echoed his words, and watched him out of sight as he tramped away in the direction which would take him to the Albaicin. Then I hurried back to the villa and opened the packet. It contained the shield-shaped Toledo brooch by the gift of which I had infuriated Carmona; that, and nothing besides. But—unless it had been stolen from her—it was an assurance that she had sent the messenger, that she wished me to trust him.

Nevertheless, there was danger that I might fall into a trap in keeping a night tryst at the cave of a gypsy, especially a gypsy who had either deserted or been banished from the colony. But not to run this risk was to run a far greater one, that of losing the chance offered by Monica; and of such an alternative I could not even think.

If I told the man, Pepe, who looked after my wants at the villa where I intended to go, I might succeed in compromising Monica, in case she were so late that Pepe was alarmed. As her name must be kept out of the affair at any cost, I decided that due caution would be protection enough. Unless the news of my presence in Granada had reached Carmona in his bed, there was little fear of treachery; and when I slipped into my hip pocket the revolver bought in Madrid, I felt that I was safe.

It was a dark and lonely road, that way of the dead. Not a soul had I met when I reached a narrow path, a mere goat track, leading higher up the hillside to a row of four or five tiny lighted windows in the rock. These must, I knew, mark the cave dwellings of which the gypsy had spoken, some little offshoot from the main settlement by the Albaicin. The door which I reached first was closed. No one stood waiting, but I opened it and went in.

A faint light, cast by a small paraffin lamp set in a niche hollowed out of the whitewashed rock, made darkness visible in a tiny room with a rough earthen floor. A red calico curtain at the far end signified a second cave-room beyond. No one was visible, no one answered when I spoke, and I sat down to wait on a dilapidated rush-bottomed chair which stood with its back to the red curtain.



After that, nothing.

And then, dreams.

There was one dream about a room, a large room it seemed to be, shadowy in the corners, and with walls where Christian and Moorish warriors fought in tapestry, leaping off sometimes on their stallions, and spurring back into place again.

In the room was a great bed with dark silk curtains. A man lay in it, but suddenly sat up, and looked eagerly at something which seemed to be myself, dead or dying. But I did not care. I knew who he was, and that we hated each other for some reason which I could not remember, but it was impossible to recall his name. That was twisted up in a thousand skeins of silk; or was it a woman's yellow hair?

The man exclaimed, "Good—very good," more than once to someone I could not see. Then he said, when the someone else had spoken, "Only keep him till after I'm married. I don't care what you do with him after that. Fling him into a well, or let him go. Either way he can never find out or prove anything troublesome."

This was all of that part of the dream, though there was another which came soon after, and was somehow connected with it. It was a dream about a long dark passage, which smelled like a cellar, and I was being dragged through it by two voices, a thing which did not appear at all out of the ordinary, though it was disagreeable.

After that, concrete thoughts were lost in one tremendous throbbing ache, which was in the back of my head at first, but spread slowly down the spine, until at last my whole body felt as if it had been pounded with giant hammers.

I had an idea at one time that I had fallen into the power of the Inquisition, and been tortured by the head screw and the rack, because often a man in a black capucha flitted about me; but later I realized that my suffering was caused by becoming conscious of the world's motion—a terrible, ceaseless whirling, which, being once felt, could be escaped only in death.

This was appalling. I lived through many years of the horror, but I fell off the world at last on to another planet, where there came a period of peace.



When I waked up I was looking at my hands.

To my great surprise they were no longer brown and strong as a young man's hands ought to be, but of a sickly white, and so thin that I found myself laughing at them in a slow, soft way, as one laughs in one's sleep.

At first it did not seem to matter that I should have hands like that; but suddenly, with a rush of blood to the heart, I realized that it was unnatural, dreadful, that something hideous must have happened to me.

In a moment my head was clear, and I felt as if a tight band had been taken off my forehead.

Yes, something had happened, but what?

I looked round and saw a room unfamiliar, yet already hated. It was a small, but beautiful room, the walls covered with Moorish work, such as I had seen at the Alhambra. I lay on a divan-bed, in an alcove without windows; but in the room beyond, I saw one with a dainty filigree frame, supported by a marble pillar. There was also an archway, from which a curtain was pushed aside, and I could see the end of a marble bath.

How had I come to this place? Where was it, and how long had I been there? were the next questions I asked myself.

There was no more dreaming now. The room was real; and the whiteness and emaciation of my hands were real. A man must have been very ill, and for a long time, to have hands as white and thin as that.

Suddenly I sat up, crying aloud, "Monica!"

The sound of her name brought her image before me. What horrible thing had been done to me that I should have forgotten her very existence?

Strength failed, and I fell back, a dampness coming out on my forehead. Above all, what had been done to her? "Don't leave me alone," she had begged; yet I had deserted her. I was—here.

The motoring days came back to me; happy, hopeful days in the open air. How long ago were they that I should be thus broken, that I should feel like a man grown old?

Slowly, and cold as the trail of a snake, a thought crawled into my mind.

I remembered a short story I had read once. It was by Gertrude Atherton, and at the time I had thought it the most harrowing story ever written. A woman had gone to sleep, young, beautiful, beloved. She had waked to find her hair grey, her hands old and veined. Twenty blank years of madness she had spent in a lunatic asylum, after being driven mad by a shock, waking to sanity at last only to find herself an old woman.

Had I been mad? Was I old now, with my wasted white hands?

Tingling with dread I touched my face. My chin was rough with a stubble of beard. I fancied there were hollows in my cheeks. Was my hair grey?

Somewhere there must be a mirror. I tried to struggle up and find it, that I might see my own image and know the worst; but a giddiness came over me, and I had to lie down again, or I knew that I should faint.

"I have Carmona to thank for this," I said aloud, furiously. But then I asked myself, how did I know that there ever had been a Carmona, that there ever had been a girl called Monica Vale? Perhaps I had dreamed them both, in the time of madness.

There had been many dreams. Suddenly I remembered a man's voice saying: "Only keep him till after I'm married." The voice had been Carmona's. I knew that now.

No, I had never been mad. A horrible trick had been played on me—in the gypsy's cave. I remembered that. Everything was blank since, except for the dreams. Perhaps some of them had been true. Perhaps, half-unconscious—(for somebody must have come out from behind that red curtain and struck me on the head)—I had been taken to him, that he might be sure it was the right man. Somebody had been ordered to keep me, until after—Again I sat up, with a groan. I must get out of this. I must save Monica from the man, and from her own mother. But—if it was already too late?

There was a sound in the room. From a door I could not see, someone had come in. A key had turned, and was being turned again. The dream of the Inquisition came back to my mind, for the man in the black capucha stood looking at me.

"Who are you?" I asked. Although for many years I had spoken English, and Spanish only for a few weeks, it was mechanically that I used Spanish now.

"Your good friend," came from under the capucha, while there was a glitter of eyes through the two slanting slits in the black silk.

"If you're my friend, you'll let me out of this place, wherever it is," I said.

"But I am your doctor as well, and you are too weak to go out. This is the first time you have spoken sensible words, and now they are not wise."

"I'm not too weak to hear how I came here, how long I have been, and—" He cut me short, with a wave of a yellow old hand. Under the capucha he wore an ordinary black coat, such as elderly Spaniards of the middle class wear every day.

"You must not excite yourself," he said. "As for your coming here, I found you lying in the road one dark night, with your head cut open, and out of compassion I brought you into my house."

"If you are a doctor, and have no reason to hide your face from me, why do you cover it up with a capucha?" I went on incredulously.

"It is the capucha of the cofradia to which I belong," explained the man. "I wear it at certain hours because of a vow which will not expire till Corpus Christi. If I were a wicked person, who wished you harm, why need I trouble to hide my face so that you should not know it again? I live alone in this house, and if I wished you evil, I need never let you leave these rooms. But instead, I have taken care of you, and you have repaid some experiments I have made, for now I think you are getting well. You have only to be patient."

"Tell me how long since you played good Samaritan and picked me up by the roadside," said I. "Then perhaps I shall try to be patient."

"How long?" he echoed. "I can't tell you that. To a philosopher like me days and weeks are much the same."

"Philosophers have often been in the pay of dukes," I said.

"Those days have passed. I live my life without dukes."

"Without the Duke of Carmona?"

"The Duke of Carmona? That is a mere name to me. Why do you speak it?"

"I think you can guess."

"I fear that after all your brain is not clear. We must have a little more of the good medicine."

Before I knew what he meant to do, he was out of the alcove, and out of sight in the room beyond. Again I tried my strength, and would have followed, but before I could do more than struggle up from the bed, the door had been unlocked, and locked again.

"He must keep the key in his pocket," I thought.

I did not believe a word of the plausible explanations. The continued mental effort I had been making had cleared, rather than tired my brain; and I was out of that black sea of horror in which I had been drowning.

I had not been mad, and I could not have been in this house for many weeks, since the man in the capucha talked of Corpus Christi as still in the future.

I remembered Colonel O'Donnel's telegram, and his mention of a man in Granada whom Carmona valued above many doctors. It seemed not impossible that this person and my "good friend" were one and the same; but if—weak as I was now—I hoped to get out of his house alive, perhaps I had better change my tactics, and keep my suspicions to myself, until I should recover strength. If the man believed that he had convinced me of his innocence and kindly intentions, he would perhaps think it easier to let me live than to put me violently out of the way.

I made up my mind to cultivate a more reasonable spirit, until my body might help me defend other convictions. And one thing gave me courage to keep the resolution. The fact that my host was not willing yet to discharge me as cured, argued that there was still a strong motive for detaining me behind locked doors. The time of which Carmona had spoken in my dream had not come. He was not married yet, and I said to myself that he never would be, if it depended on Monica's consent to be his wife.

Since that hour in the cathedral of Seville nothing would make her believe me disloyal, I thought; therefore nothing could make her disloyal to me.

Knowing little of illness, I trusted that, after all, I had not been put away here for long. Maybe a few days of fever and delirium would waste the hands and bleach out the brown stain of sunburn. At the moment, though I was young, and had been strong, I would have no chance against even an old man; but if I ate, and could crawl up to take a little exercise, a day or two ought to make a vast difference.

I was still of this mind when the capucha came back. So softly did he unlock the door that I did not hear him, but he was not as stealthy about locking it again. He had brought me a glass of milk; and when I had drunk it he asked me to get up, and let him judge of my strength.

Weak as I was, I felt that I could have risen, but I determined to fight him with his own weapons. Making a faint effort, I fell back on the pillows, and closed my eyes.

"It will take many more glasses of milk before you need again ask 'But when do I leave you?' " said the voice through the capucha.

I agreed, and pleased myself with my strategy after the man had gone out, until to my alarm I was overcome with sleep.

He had put something into the milk.



XXXVIII

THE FOUNTAIN

The delicate fretwork of the walls was blurred in twilight when I waked from heavy, irresistible sleep.

I felt dull, but could trace no other bad effect from the drug. Indeed, I fancied that I was stronger; and very slowly, with occasional rests, I got upon my feet and began to crawl about the room.

There was very little furniture, but what there was, was good, and of a graceful Moorish design which suited the wall decoration, and the horseshoe shape of the window. This had an elaborate lattice of wood, which let in plenty of air, as there was no glass; but outside were six stout bars of iron, and the lattice was securely fastened. I stared through the pattern of wood into a very small but charming patio, paved with brick and tiles, and having in the centre a fountain, with a shallow basin. Feathery plumes of water played over a few low palms in great blue and white pots of Triana ware, but as I looked the plumes shrank almost to nothing, then ceased to wave. The fountain was asleep for the night.

Supporting myself with a hand on the wall, I got to the room of the marble bath. There, the window was but a foot square, and was set high in the wall. On a low, carved bench, lay the clothing I had worn on the night of my visit to the gypsy's cave. I sat down, and explored the pockets. What money I had had—six or seven hundred pesetas, so far as I could remember—was gone; so was my gold watch, and the revolver I had so gaily carried as a sure means of self-protection.

"Gypsy perquisites," I said to myself, but the sight of the clothes brought back the past so vividly that I could see myself bidding good-bye to Dick at the railway station. Loyal, resourceful old Dick! Why had he not found his friend in all this time, while my hands were growing white and thin?

Surely there must have been some hue or cry, when I did not appear either at the villa or the hotel? A man cannot vanish off the face of the earth, I told myself, and leave no trace. I longed for the man with the capucha to come back, so that I could ask him more questions, even though I could put no faith in his answers; but he did not appear again that night. I slept after a time, a sleep of exhaustion; and when I waked in broad daylight, I found a glass of milk on a small Moorish stand by the bed.

I could not bear to drink it, lest the same drug should make me sleep as before. But how regain strength without food? And evidently I was to have this or none.

For a time I waited, hoping that my "good friend" would come, and that, if I told him I disliked milk, he would give me something else, not so easy to mix with a drug. At last, however, I grew faint. Perhaps, I thought, the milk was innocent this time. I drank, and the same heaviness overcame me. So, through most of the day I slept, and raged against myself when I awoke.

Again, a full glass stood by the bedside, but I would not drink. Many hours of dozing had left me wakeful; and my eyes were wide open when, an hour or two after dawn, the door in the outer room was softly unlocked.

He had not forgotten his capucha, though he must have expected to find me asleep. In his hand was a glass of milk, but when he had seen that I lay awake, he saw also that the other glass had not been touched.

I was neither hungry no thirsty, I said in excuse. And I could not rest because I was not comfortable. It had got upon my nerves, I explained, to feel my hair long on my neck and my face unshaven. Would my host get in a barber?

The man reflected for a moment, and then said that he would do his best as a barber. At present, and until his vow had been accomplished, he did not go out, except after nightfall, and therefore could not ask anyone to come to the house.

The instant he had turned his back, I slipped off the bed, so that I might be ready to stagger as well as I could from my alcove, and pounce upon him when he had the door open; for I believed that I was strong enough now to have some chance. But his hearing must have been keen, for he turned, and told me not to exert myself. What—I was only getting up so as to be ready when he came back with shears and razor? I need not trouble. He would do all while I was in bed; and he would wait until he had seen me return there.

He was master of the situation, and knew it. I was obliged to give him his way; and afterwards he was so quick in getting to the door that, in my weak state, I could not have reached him in time.

When he came back, however, I was ready. Waiting just inside the door, as it was cautiously opened I threw myself upon him. But I had overestimated my strength, and underestimated his. Quick and lithe as a leopard, the old man wound himself round me, and for a moment we struggled together for the mastery, I thinking of the razor he had promised to bring, and hoping to get it. If I could do that, I should be able to keep him at bay, without any violence, save threats.

Once, I had almost got him down, or he let me fancy it; but with a sudden twist he caused me to lose my balance, which was none too steady. I slipped on the tiled floor, and had half saved myself when a quick push sent me staggering back. Instantly the capucha was on the other side of the door, a bolt slid into place, and the key turned in the lock.

Rage gave me a brief spurt of strength. I caught up the carved wooden bench in the bathroom, and dashed it furiously again and again against a panel of the door. But the strong wood did not even crack under my blows.

As hour after hour passed, and I was left alone, from time to time I renewed my efforts, with no result except that eventually I broke the bench. Then I tore at the lattice of the window, thrusting my fingers through, and trying vainly to pull the woodwork to pieces. Though the iron bars on the outside would prevent my escaping into the patio, I thought, if the lattice were broken, shouts might be heard more easily.

At last, when I had been obliged to give up hope, I pressed my face against the close pattern of the woodwork and yelled lustily, till my voice failed. But my own shouts were the only sounds I heard, save distant church bells, and the singing of subterranean waters, silent only at night when the fountain went to sleep. It would be all but impossible, I had to admit, for anyone outside to judge the direction of a cry, coming through a screened window surrounded on all sides by high house walls.

Darkness fell; and I grew so hungry that I would gladly have drunk the milk left since morning. I tasted it, and found it spoiled by the heat, for the day had been warm. In disgust I threw it away, but when all that night had gone and part of the next day, I regretted my fastidiousness.

Frequent draughts of water from the room of the marble bath gave me an occasional fillip, but a man recovering from congestion of the brain or some such malady, following the breaking of his head, cannot live long on water; and it was clear that my host, disgusted with my "ingratitude," intended to punish me cruelly or to put an end to me by starvation.

When the second night closed in, I made up my mind that he had decided upon my death. Perhaps, if I had been docile, when the time fixed by his employer had expired, he might have chosen to set me free, trusting that I believed his story. But seeing that I did not believe it, that I would spare no effort, no trick, which might enable me to escape while my presence in the outside world was still highly undesirable, the man had probably crushed all humane feeling for his prisoner. Since no one had sought me, living, in his house, it was unlikely that I should be sought for there when dead.

I was at the window, as I told myself these things, looking out into the patio, where the palms, and the shell which was the upper basin of the fountain, were faintly definable in starlight. Robbed of my watch, the only way I had of calculating time after nightfall was by the silence which came about an hour after sunset. Then the gurgling voice of hidden water (which sang underground in this secluded patio as everywhere in the Albaicin, and on the Alhambra hill) abruptly ceased, after a distant ringing which I took to be that of the bell in the Torre de la Vela, regulating the irrigation of all the country round. At this same moment the diamond plumes of the fountain invariably fell, and disappeared, not to wave again until the morning sun was up.

I was always sorry when the fountain died, for it was the sole companion of my captivity, my one dim pleasure watching its nymph-like play. And to-night the dead silence of the patio seemed the lull before my own death.

It must have been, I thought, somewhere about ten o'clock when I heard a new sound in the court, slight, elusive, but distinct. Chink—chink—like metal on stone, as if a troll were mining underground. The old man was taking time by the forelock, I said grimly to myself, getting ready a place in some cellar to lay me away when I should be finished. I should last some days yet; but it took time to do these things well. At the hotel they had told me how a year or two ago, in destroying an old house in the Albaicin to build a new one on the sight, workmen had come across the skeletons of two French grenadiers neatly sealed up in a wall of stone, where they had kept guard since the time of the Peninsular War. Probably a night or two had been needed for the making of their niche.

Chink—chink! Yes, the old wretch must be at work in a cellar. The noise certainly came from underground; and it was not as agreeable to my ears as the tinkle of the vanished fountain. I wished the hour would come for the water to leap up and drown that other stealthy sound.

Suddenly, as I turned a wistful gaze on the alabaster shell dimly glimmering among the low palms, to my astonishment it seemed to totter. I thought that it must be a mere illusion of weary eyes, or that the effect was created by a cloud obscuring the starlight. But again the white shell moved against the dark green background, this time swaying from side to side.

Could there be an earthquake, so slight that I did not feel the shock? Even as I asked myself the question, the shell of the fountain was loosened from its support, and fell into the main basin, now almost empty. The water-lilies and their green pads which floated sparsely there muffled the sound of the crash, but there was a noise of breaking. The slabs of coloured mosaic which paved the lower basin upheaved, as if the earth beneath were bursting, and scattered from side to side, falling over the crushed lines. Then through a ragged black aperture rose the head and shoulders of a man.

The metallic sound had stopped; but from somewhere in the house there came the slamming of a door.

The head and shoulders, motionless now, were sharply defined against the scattered heap of white fragments, like the bust of a man modelled in black marble. Someone whistled softly, and the tune was, "The Girl I Left Behind Me."

"Dick!" I called through the close wooden lattice.

"Hurrah!" he answered; and the black marble bust became a full length statue of a man.

How he had found me, how he had come, I did not know; but there he was, and the gate of life had not closed upon me after all. Dick was out of the jagged hole in the basin, and half across the patio, when a door, which I had always seen shut, burst open to let out a stream of light, and the figure of the old man I knew so well, leaped on him.

I was weak, and for a moment I turned sick, the patio with its broken fountain, and the forms of the men in a halo of yellow light, whirling before my eyes as if there were indeed an earthquake. Then the mist cleared, and like a rat in a cage I watched the fight which meant life or death for more than one of us.

There was no capucha now to cover the grey-streaked head and venerable beard. Once I caught a glimpse of a profile sharp as a hawk's. The old man had come out of the house with a Toledo sword-stick, such as the King and his friend had used with the brigands, and as he saw the enemy he had to deal with, he had thrown away the bamboo stick. The long, thin blade glittered in the same light that showed me Dick, armed with an iron crowbar, formidable and threatening.

If it had been a scene in a play, and I in the audience, I should have applauded, for there was something in me which cried out that it was a fine picture. But Dick's life and mine were in the balance.



XXXIX

DAY AFTER TO-MORROW

The pair stood eyeing each other like two fencers, Dick with the crowbar raised, and pointing at his heart the blade which would pierce it when the Spaniard dared advance an inch.

I longed to shout "Fling the crowbar at his head!" But if Dick's eye released the eye of his opponent he was a dead man, I must not risk distracting him for the fraction of a second.

It seemed an hour, though it could not have been a minute when, as if my thought had winged to his brain, the thick iron bar whirled through the air, and struck the old man full upon the forehead. The Toledo blade dropped from his hand, and he fell back without a cry, his head inside the open door.

"Is he dead?" I called.

Dick bent over the limp body; but, after a long moment, he was up again, waving a big, old-fashioned key.

"No," he answered. "Heart beating. Bad penny. He'll be all right. This the key of spider's parlour?"

"I think so," I said. "Dick, you're just in time to keep me from giving in. I'm starved."

He stooped and picked up the crowbar.

"Old brute! I've a mind to finish him!" he exclaimed.

"You don't mean that," I said. "But look for something to tie him up with. He may come to himself before we're off."

"I guess I'll just tote him along with me," said Dick. "Safe bind, safe find."

Gathering up the long body as if it had been the form of a sleeping child, Dick disappeared into the house. I knew that he was looking for the door of my cage, and presently—for the first time with pleasure—I heard the slipping back of the bolt and turning of the key.

Already I was at the door, opening it for Dick to come in with his heavy burden.

"Here's the bed," I said, and Dick laid his burden down, not too gently. Then I think the next thing we did was to shake hands.

"Blessed old man!" exclaimed Dick, a little unsteadily. "What a beastly business."

"It's a mystery," I said. "And how you got to me—"

"Conduit," said Dick, "But I'll tell you all about that, and everything. Got no electric light here?"

"Nothing but starlight. For Heaven's sake, tell me about Monica!"

"She's all right," said Dick. "Not a Duchess yet, if that's what worries you. Look here, if this place has been good enough to box you up in all this time, it's good enough to keep him in—" (He nodded towards the alcove.) "He lives alone here, without servants; I've found out all that, with a lot more; and his master—guess you know who—is in Madrid; so when this chap comes to himself he can try how he likes your quarters. They seem rather nice ones, judging from what I can see; but Carmona always does himself well."

"Is this Carmona's house?" I asked.

"You bet it is. Little private sort of place he keeps ready when he wants to amuse himself in some way which his mother and Monica and other people mightn't approve of in Dukes. This old Johnny's a combination of caretaker and physician in ordinary to his grace. But let's get out of this. I can't give you a marble bath or Moorish decorations at my hotel, but I shouldn't wonder if you'd prefer the accommodation; and after that conduit business I need a 'wash and brush up' as much as you do. Why, old man, what's the matter? Not going to crack up, are you?"

"I'm all right," I said; "but I haven't had anything to eat since the day after I saw you off, except milk, and none of that for the last two days."

"Great Scott! you're joking. We parted five weeks ago!"

The words gave me a shock in spite of the stubble on my chin and the whiteness of my hands. Dick had his wet arm round my shoulders, and we were at the door, which he was about to lock, and I startled him by caving in a little at the knees.

"See here," he said, hanging on to my arm as if he were afraid I should vanish in thin air, "we won't wait to dine at my hotel. We'll nose round a bit in this old Johnny's larder. You must be bucked up before you go out into the street. Oh, it's safe enough. The old brute's a hermit—for his own reasons or Carmona's. Nobody comes near the house, and we can take our own time. While you're eating you shall hear everything I've got to tell."

He locked and bolted the door, and helped me down the stairs, up which I must have been carried unconscious; perhaps by the gypsy, assisted by the master of the house.

Below stairs the place was dark save for the light which had streamed out into the patio with the opening door. It came from a good-sized room evidently intended for a kitchen, but also used by the solitary tenant as a dining-room. It had a window opening on the court; this, however, was not only covered with heavy shutters, but protected by a curtain as well, and ventilation came through an adjoining room from a window that looked on another small court.

Evidently my gaoler had been interrupted in the midst of his supper, and hearing a noise in the patio had stopped only long enough to snatch up a sword-stick. On the table was a simple meal of cold meat, salad, goats'-milk cheese, and fresh fruit; but to my starved eyes it seemed a feast. There was also a bottle half-full of red Spanish wine; and I did not wait for Dick's suggestion to sit down. I must get back my strength if I were to be of any use to Monica or myself, and I hardly listened to Dick's warning that a starved man must not satisfy his first hunger.

"Eat slowly, and not too much," he said, with anxious eyes on my face, which must have been frightful, though he was too tactful to make comments. As I obeyed, he told me his story, briefly and disjointedly, as the points came back to him.

"Didn't hear from you," he said, "and began wondering what was up. Wired twice; no answer; was a bit taken up with my own affairs just then, I'm afraid. Yes, I mean Pilar. After five days, wired the landlord. He answered you'd left with a friend. I thought that queer, and set out for Granada by next train, Ropes with me. At the Washington Irving I found both my telegrams to you and a letter. Landlord said he got a note from you, dated Motril, telling him you'd met a friend and gone off unexpectedly in his automobile. You enclosed more than enough money to pay bill and tips, and asked him to have your luggage packed and kept till your return, which might be in a few days or not for some time. Naturally, he hadn't worried; and as he'd destroyed the letter, I couldn't tell if it was your handwriting.

"Well, I thought you might have rushed off suddenly on account of some lark of Carmona's; but I soon found out he was still in Granada, slowly getting better; and the guests hadn't gone. By the way, I called, but nobody in the house was seeing visitors. Ropes discovered that your car was in a stable down in the town, where you'd left it, without saying for how long. He and I were getting scared, and I went to the police, but didn't dare give your real name without your permission, especially as the authorities had a kind of prejudice against it. Fired off my best Spanish, though, and insinuated that Carmona wasn't very fond of you; but when I began hinting that it might be convenient for his plans that you should disappear, they wouldn't take me seriously, were polite, and all that, promised to look you up, as if you were a stray kitten, but intimated that most people who vanished had private reasons for doing so.

"After that, I didn't expect them to find out anything, and they did their best not to disappoint me. I saw that if anybody was going to do the Sherlock Holmes' act, it must be Ropes and me. We sat tight at the Washington Irving, and looked around; but at the end of a fortnight no one was any wiser than at the beginning. Then what should happen but the dear old Colonel and Pilar popped down to see if they could help. Oh, and I forgot to tell you that meanwhile the people at Carmona's palace had cleared out. They'd gone back to Seville again by train; and what should happen but the Colonel and Pilar met Carmona face to face in the station."

"Not Monica?" I broke in.

"No. I suppose the others had got into a carriage; he was lingering behind to give a valet directions about luggage. And then there was a scene. Pilar told me all about it. Carmona bowed; and before the Cherub could pull the little girl away, as he tried, seeing danger in her eye, she gave the Duke a piece of her mind. Said he was a villain, or some kind words of that sort. He retorted by saying to her father that he could make a lot of trouble for Cristobal if they didn't take care. Pilar said they could accuse him of worse things than he could them; and somehow or other, in an evil moment, the subject of Corcito, a grey bull Carmona was once nasty about, came up. Then, before she knew what she was doing, Pilar flashed out the name of Vivillo, the beast she wanted to buy, you know. And from that minute the fat was in the fire as far as she was concerned. But about that later. What with you and the bull, she was in a dreadful state of mind when she got here, poor child. However, she put on her thinking cap, and said she, 'Try the gypsies. See if they don't know something.'

"That was enough for me. I took a sudden fancy to Captain Pepe, the chief of the gypsies, and went every night to see a dance in his cave. But I soon saw he was straight; and they weren't a bad lot of people in the colony. The nasty ones he kicked out, and they had to hustle for themselves. Captain Pepe told me about one fellow, Juan Castello, who'd got himself disliked, though he was a nailer with the guitar; and when he said the chap had a sister who had a fine position in the house of a titled person, because she was the best seamstress in the country, I pricked up my ears. You can bet, after I'd heard the titled person was Carmona, I turned my attention to Mr. Castello, dropped in on him one day, named a big price, and asked him to give me lessons on the guitar. He didn't mind if he did, and we got quite friendly. I spent several evenings in his cave, where one night I heard a dog howling, as if it was mighty sick, behind a red curtain."

"That red curtain!" I exclaimed. "I shouldn't be where I am now, or have a scar on the back of my head, if I'd looked behind it."

"By Jove! Well, I got some idea of that sort. Castello said the dog belonged to a gentleman in Granada, who lived all alone in the Albaicin, and kept this beast as a watch-dog; but he was afraid it was going mad, and told Castello to shoot it. However, it was a valuable animal, and Castello was undertaking to cure it for his own benefit. Already it was better, and the owner talked of buying it back if it recovered. The old gentleman was coming up to see the dog that very evening, perhaps, Castello said; and being evidently proud of a respectable acquaintance, he went on talking about him, I encouraging him all I could, because any friend of his might prove interesting to me.

"The minute I heard the chap was a kind of herb doctor, and sometimes treated grand people, I nearly jumped off my seat; for you know why Carmona was supposed to come to Granada?"

I nodded.

"Well, Castello was in with this doctor in a way, for he was engaged by him to fetch herbs and flowers from the mountains—like the Manzanilla, for instance, which only begins to grow at an elevation of twelve thousand feet. Castello believed that the old fellow could make poisons too, as well as antidotes; and said I to myself, 'Maybe that little dagger in the cathedral was specially prepared, eh?' Which would account for Carmona hurrying off to Granada after it had found the wrong billet.

"Anyhow, I said I'd like to see the dog, so I was taken behind the red curtain into Mr. Castello's bedroom, and on a shelf lay a revolver which might have been twin to the one you bought in Madrid."

"It was still more nearly related," said I.

"Well, I thought so, but wasn't sure enough to call on the police. I went away when I'd said nice things about the sick dog; but I didn't go far. I hung around till Castello's visitor had been and gone, and then followed him to the door of this house. Such a mild, intelligent looking, well-dressed old gentleman, the herb doctor was; but I guess I needn't describe him to you!

"Next day I bought some things at a baker's not far from here, and buttered up the shopkeeper, saying his store was too good for the neighbourhood. Of course he told me he had rich customers, and it was jolly lucky I'd been fagging up Spanish for Pilar's sake, or I should have missed a lot, right there. I soon got him on the subject of the herb doctor, his best client, who, though supposed to be well-off, and living in a good house, did all his shopping himself and kept no servants. Nobody knew much about him, except what he said of himself; that he could set bones, and was able to make as much money as he liked, selling his herb medicines to great personages. Who were the great personages? The baker couldn't tell; but the doctor had lived in his present house for years, after taking it when in a bad state of repair, and having it done up inside by workmen he brought from Madrid. From that day on, no one the baker knew had ever been invited in, though he'd heard stories of veiled ladies, and sounds of music at night.

"At that, the thought jumped into my mind that maybe the house was Carmona's, a little secret plaything of his. And I remembered reading about a famous old palace in the Albaicin with an underground way to the Alhambra. Why shouldn't there be such a way from Carmona's palace to the doctor's house? And what a convenient place it would be to keep a troublesome person."

"Or to kill one," I amended.

"I thought of that; but I hoped. People don't commit murder when their blood is cool if they can get what they want cheaper. I went again to the police, said I believed that my friend was detained against his will in the house of Doctor Molina. But when they wanted my reasons I couldn't give any to convince them. They thought I was mad, and refused to search. I was afraid they'd warn the old chap to look out for a crazy American, so I hurried up and took matters into my own hands.

"I wasn't sure enough of anything to jump on the man outside his own door and do the burglar act openly, lest the police should jump on me, and I should be laid by before I'd found you. But about that time I began to have water on the brain; or rather, I got possessed with the idea of sneaking into houses by means of conduits; and no wonder, when the whole Albaicin is honeycombed with watercourses, gluddering and gurgling from morning till night.

"In the next street to this, there's a Moorish house of much the same sort, being torn down. They were selling old tiles to curiosity dealers one day, so I strolled into the patio. The pavement was up, and I saw how the conduit ran underneath and supplied the fountain. That was instructive. Opposite this place of Molina's is a mill. I found out how the miller got his water, and that after it turned his wheel, it poured in this direction, being turned off every night about nine. At the miller's the conduit is open, only guarded by a rail; and I developed a taste for making sketches and taking photographs—tourist in search of the picturesque; miller got used to seeing me about, while I made myself familiar with the landscape. Then I bought a crowbar and a little electric lamp. The bar I hid under my coat; and when I was ready to shed the garment, Ropes put it on. I guess it was a looser fit for him than that conduit was for me, and there were twelve feet of conduit; good long strait-jacket, but I've been in it a lot of times now, and feel quite at home. You see, the job couldn't be done in one go, for I had to make the hole under the fountain bigger, and I've been tinkering away for nearly a week, o' nights when the water was stopped. And if I'd come up at last, like a demon in a pantomime, to find I'd had my trouble for my pains, I can't say what I should have turned my wits to next."

"Does Pilar know?" I asked.

"She and the Colonel went off in a hurry to Madrid just before I took the job on. They thought they could influence the police at headquarters, which was their principal reason for going; though they had one or two others besides. But see here, you've got the story pat now, and you're looking a thousand per cent. more healthy than when you sat down at this table ten minutes ago. Poor old Ropes, who always hangs about keeping guard, will be mighty glad to see you; but before we open the door and walk out as if we owned the house, let's have a look round. There may be something which will give me a chance to say 'I told you so!' to the police."

Refreshed with wine, and such scanty rations as Dick had allowed, I walked steadily enough into the adjoining room, while Dick carried a lamp. There were no such gorgeous decorations here, as in the suite I had reluctantly occupied. A modern bed stood in one corner. There were shelves on the wall, fitted with glass doors which protected jars and bottles. On a large table lay an outfit for chemical experiments, and on another some yellow flowers half buried in green leaves. In the window was a modern desk, and Dick at once began to rummage among the few papers in the pigeon-holes. There was nothing, however, which seemed to bear upon our affairs, with the exception of a telegraph form, which I seized upon. It was dated June first, and had been sent from a Madrid office. There was no signature, but there was a hint of something secret in the three words it contained. "Day after to-morrow."

Dick and I stared at the paper, as if we expected the meaning of the message to spring up to our eyes.

"My name's not Richard D. Waring if Carmona's signature oughtn't to be tacked on to that," he said. "Now, we've something to go upon, for a beginning. This telegram will be traced to the sender before I'm many hours older; we can trust our dear old Cherub for that."

"Day after to-morrow," I repeated. "What's going to happen day after to-morrow, that Carmona should have wired to this man?"

"I should say it was his way of letting Molina know that the cage door could open."

"But why day after to-morrow? He—" I broke off suddenly, and it seemed that my heart would stop beating. "Dick," I began again, in a queer voice that did not sound like my own, "is Monica—" I could not finish the sentence. But Dick understood.

"Forgive me," he said. "I saw you weren't strong enough to bear it at first. I wanted you to eat, and then—I'd have kept it back a bit longer if I could, just till I got you to the hotel. She's going to marry him—on the third of June, Heaven knows why, though Pilar vows the girl can't be to blame, and that they've made her believe somehow she's sacrificing herself for your sake."

"What day is this?" I asked.

"The first. The Royal Wedding was yesterday, and a terrible bomb explosion, in which the King and Queen had a narrow escape, and—but come, Ramon, I want to get you to the hotel."

"I'm not going to the hotel," I said. "I'm going to Madrid, to stop Carmona's marriage."



XL

THROUGH THE NIGHT

Dick looked at me with indulgent sympathy, as if I were a child.

"It's after eleven o'clock at night," he said. "The train for Madrid went two hours ago, and—"

"Did you say Ropes was waiting for you outside?" I asked.

"Yes."

"And my car's still in the garage where I put it?"

"Yes; but you're not in a fit state for a journey. If you could see yourself—"

"Oh, I know I'm a nightmare apparition," I cut in; "but when I'm shaved and—"

"The trip would kill you."

"It would kill me not to take it."

We looked at each other for a moment, then Dick said—

"All right. Come on. I know what you feel. But what about that old reprobate upstairs?"

"I'll wait for you here while you take up some food and leave it in the room. We can't waste time in Granada on his account. I'll tell my story, and you can tell yours to the police in Madrid, after I—after I've done what I'm going there to do."

"How long a drive is it?" Dick asked resignedly.

"It's about two hundred and seventy miles. If we can start by one or two, bar accidents we ought to be in Madrid by noon."

"The royal bull-fight's to-morrow," answered Dick. "Although the wedding's next day, and the invitations have been out a fortnight, Carmona and Lady Monica are bound to be there, as it's a royal invitation show; that means a command."

"Very well," said I. "Since it may be as difficult to reach her in Madrid as in Seville and Granada, I shall wait outside the entrance to the bull-ring, and as she's about to go in, she shall see me and hear the whole truth. Don't look as if you thought it would do no good, Dick; if she's promised to marry Carmona in spite of all, it's because he has made her think he can ruin me if she refuses. Pilar's instinct is right, I know; and now for the first time I understand why Carmona didn't denounce me to the police as Casa Triana, when Monica refused to keep her engagement with him, as I'm sure she did. No doubt he told her lies—that I could be imprisoned—for years, perhaps. And his wounded hand—what an opportunity for him! Ah! he wouldn't waste it. He'd make her believe I stabbed him in the cathedral that night. How plausible! And as he's been very ill, can't you imagine what her fears for me must have been? Dick, I regard her coming marriage as a proof of love, not of indifference."

"I'm ready to agree with you," said Dick. "But you're risking your life to prove it."

"Nonsense," I answered. "The thought that I'm free, that I'm going to her, and that at last I have Carmona in my hand, will give me strength enough to get through."

Dick raised his eyebrows, but did not answer. He was collecting bread and meat on a plate, to leave for the man upstairs.

Five minutes later we were out of the house and in the street. In front of the miller's premises Ropes was walking up and down. He did not say much when he saw that Dick had a companion; but as he wrung the hand I held out to him, I heard him breathing hard, and he swore under his breath when he saw my face by the light of a street lamp.

It was the look on his which made me realize, as Dick's persuasions had not, that I must delay long enough to be made again into some semblance of a sane man. An hour more before getting on the road would not endanger success, though it would try my patience. A quarter of a mile's walk to the garage was a sharper test of my strength than I would confess; but when Ropes had roused the watchman, filled the good old Gloria with petrol, and started her up the hill, the rush of pure night air gave me life.

At the hotel, we walked in without waking the dozing concierge. Dick made me free of his things; and when, between us, we had finished my toilet, he admitted that I was not as appalling an object as he had thought. He changed his wet clothes, left a note for the landlord, and it was not yet two o'clock when we started, Ropes driving, Dick with me in the tonneau.

"To Madrid, top speed, quickest way," was the word; and I hoped for a non-stop run, or as near it as possible.

The quickest way was by Jaen, a road which none of us knew, and the starlit sky was obscured by dark clouds which heralded a summer thunder-storm. As Ropes steered across the Vega towards that gap in the mountains which is the door of the north, there came a waterspout of rain on the roof. Thunder drowned the purr of the motor, and a flash of lightning every other moment dimmed the flying circle of our acetylenes. There had been rain more than once of late, and this deluge made the road, already bad, soft and greasy as an outworn sponge. The Gloria waltzed and slipped in a mass of brown porridge, but Ropes knew that we were to drive against time, and, throwing caution to the wind, tore through the treacherous mud as if to win the cup in a great race.

We flung Granada behind us, dashing in among the foothills of the mountains, mounting a slippery defile, with the rain like whips lashing our faces. Orchards flashed by; there was a rock tunnel, where the lights shone fiercely on rough-hewn stone, and the thrum of the motor became a roar.

Out again, and still up, the beams from our lamps shooting across vineyards, plantations of figs and pomegranates, and striking silver from the curves of the Guadalbullon River. A glimpse of an old castle commanding a dark gorge, and we were at Jaen; then, presently, the road became familiar, for we had travelled it before. At this very corner we had stopped to ask the way of men who carried strange implements like fire-extinguishers, for this was Bailen; but now, instead of receiving our first glimpse of Andalucia, we were leaving it behind.

Eighty miles out of two hundred and seventy we had come, though the pace had not been good. Still the rain was ceasing, and we could make up for lost time, as country traffic had not begun yet.

La Carolina, Santa Elena; the road was mounting for the well-remembered defile of Despenaperros. Hoot! went the siren, screaming along the face of tremendous cliffs, and a louder shriek rang as if an echo. A line of fire down in the gorge meant the train from Madrid to Seville. It glittered like a string of stars drawn across a spider's-web viaduct, then vanished into a tunnel, while we swept on towards the plains of La Mancha, Ropes crouched like a goblin over his wheel.

Rain again, blurring villages, and sweeping through the stone streets of a town: fields once more, and at last Manzanares. There Dick insisted that we should stop for food, lest strength fail me when I should need it most; but I could not bear to go back to the fonda I knew, to see the pretty girls there look at my pale face with shocked eyes, perhaps to have them question me about the "white and gold angel."

It was eight o'clock when we got away from the cafe, where we had spent some twenty minutes; and the road was no longer clear. We were obliged to moderate our speed, and lost more time than we could afford getting on to Aranjuez.

"Do your best now, Ropes," I was saying, when the Gloria—for once perverse—burst a tyre with a loud explosion. Ropes threw me a rueful look.

"I'd hoped to get through without trouble, sir," he said, "but the car's lain up for more than five weeks, and there was no time last night to look her over."

"You've done splendidly," I assured him. "I'll get out with Mr. Waring and stretch my legs."

I was glad to walk, and still more glad to feel that instead of being exhausted as Dick had prophesied, strength seemed coming back. As we strolled up and down, so sure was I of Dick's sympathy that I began to talk about my hopes and fears. He did not disappoint me, but once or twice he answered absent-mindedly, with a far-off look in his eyes, and suddenly, with a pang of remorse, I remembered that I had not once referred to the progress of his love affairs. My own had preoccupied me to the exclusion of everything outside, and I had spoken of Pilar's only in connection with Monica.

Anathematizing myself aloud as an ungrateful and ungracious brute, I asked if Pilar had made up her mind.

"You needn't blame yourself," he said. "All this time she's kept me on tenter-hooks, because, though she admitted liking me, she couldn't reconcile her heart with her conscience. I got the dear old Cherub's blessing, and flaunted it in her face; but that wasn't enough. I also argued that it was her duty to marry me and try to make me as good as herself, but she seemed to think it might work out the other way. Then you disappeared, and the last word she said was that if I found you, she'd take it as a sign that San Cristobal wanted the match; seems he's a matchmaking saint, when he's in Spain, as well as a motoring one. So, you see, she'll have to keep her promise now; and I'll owe my happiness to you."

"I haven't come back to life in vain, then," I said. "It will be a good moment for me, whatever happens, when I see my little sister Pilar again."

"She'll be at the royal bull-fight," Dick sighed.

"I thought she hated bull-fights—for Vivillo's sake."

"It's for Vivillo's sake she's going. She's moved heaven and earth to get invitations."

"And she's succeeded."

"Thereby hangs a tale. But I'm not going to bother you with it."

I insisted, urging him the more to atone for past carelessness.

"Well, then," he said with another sigh, "Vivillo's fifth bull in the royal fight to-day."

I was shocked, knowing how Pilar loved the noble brown beast, and how she had counted on possessing him. But, if I had had my wits about me, I might have guessed last night how matters stood. Dick had told me then that, in the impromptu scene between Carmona and the O'Donnels, with Seville railway station for the stage, "the name of Vivillo had unfortunately come up." Now, Dick explained that Carmona had caught at the girl's hasty words, had written his agent at the ganaderia instructing him not to part with the bull at any price, no matter how far negotiations had gone with Colonel O'Donnel. A day or two later the agent was directed by telegram to send Vivillo immediately to Madrid, as the Duke had offered him as a gift for the great show of the royal bull-fight. This news had come to Pilar at Granada in an ill-spelled, but well-meaning letter from Mateo, the ganadero.

"It was sheer spite," went on Dick, "and Pilar was broken-hearted. If she hadn't blurted out Vivillo's name in a temper, the bull might have been safe. Carmona wouldn't have interested himself, as he trusts his agent in all business matters. It's true several of the grandee owners of bull-farms have been asked to give each a picked bull for the royal fight, which is expected to be the grandest affair of the generation; but Carmona could as well have given another instead of Vivillo."

"It's like him," I said. "Poor Pilar!"

"She's simply ill. But queerly enough, she hasn't given up hope yet—or hadn't when she wrote, and enclosed an invitation-ticket she'd contrived to get for me. She begged me to come if I could, and 'see her through,' though I haven't the vaguest notion what she means. All I know is, she and the Cherub have been doing everything they could till the last minute to make an exchange of bulls. The dear old chap rushed off to Madrid, as I said, to stir up the police in your affair; and Pilar hoped she might get a chance to see Lady Monica, and ask what the dickens she meant by throwing you over. But any spare time the two had, I guess they've put in for Vivillo. They bought a fine Muira bull, at a tiptop price, and offered it to the authorities in exchange for Vivillo, who has been at pasture for the last ten days, recruiting after being boxed up for his long railroad journey. Whether Carmona had a hand in that part or not, anyhow nothing could be done."

"And Pilar is going to see her pet die!" I exclaimed.

"I can't understand the Cherub allowing that," said Dick. "I went to a bull-fight with him the day after I got back to Seville. Jove, it was a sickener, though there were some fine moments, I admit; and I can understand how Spaniards, brought up to understand every stroke, every move, think it fine sport. But it isn't sport for amateurs, and I haven't been able to swallow beef since; feel as if I'd been on visiting terms with it. Last touch of horror, each bull having a name. Great Scott! how would it feel to be as intimate as that with sheep and chickens, so you could speak of frying Lottie for breakfast, or grilling Maud with peas for lunch? Of course, the royal bull-fight will be wonderful—something only seen when a Spanish king marries—but I hate the thought of Pilar being there."

"Her father'll be with her," I tried to console him.

"No, he won't. His seat's in a box. Hers has been given in Tendido Number 9, a space set apart for the senoritas de la aristocracia to sit together, in smart dresses and mantillas, as if they were part of the show."

"Perhaps Monica will be there," I said quickly.

"Not she. The Duke and Duchess of Carmona and the Duke's fiancee and her mother will be in a box next the royal bride and bridegroom; Pilar heard that, and wrote me. You see, they're in high favour at Court now, and Carmona's ambition will be satisfied at last. The new Duchess is to be a lady-in-waiting, and take up her duties when the King and Queen come back from their honeymoon."

"She never will take them up as Duchess of Carmona," said I.

"Car ready," announced Ropes, who had made record time in changing an inner tube, and was panting with his exertions.

But where was San Cristobal to-day—on this day of all others, when his services were needed? We had not gone half a mile when there came a whizz, and a grinding noise which meant a broken chain. Ropes grew pale and bit his lip. In his overpowering anxiety for me he was losing nerve.

"Never mind mending it here," I said. "Tighten up the axle, and go on with one sprocket only. We can get into the town that way, and find a machine-shop."

We did find one; but we were kept a full hour in Aranjuez; nor could we make good going afterwards as we approached the capital. The road was covered with vehicles, and packed as we neared Madrid; for every soul not bidden to the great bull-fight wished to see the favoured ones who were, and to applaud the King and Queen who by their splendid courage two days before had won double popularity.

It was almost beyond endurance to be caught in the pack, and to know that there was no way out, except to move with the throng; nevertheless, it had to be endured. And time went on.

We had hoped to run into some hole or corner as near as might be to the royal entrance of the Plaza de Toros, before the crowd began to pour in; but an hour struck as we crept into the great sunlit plaza—four o'clock; the time appointed for the pageant to begin.



XLI

THE FIFTH BULL; AND AFTER

Hundreds—thousands, it seemed—of automobiles and carriages were before us; and as the Gloria was stopped by the stopping of others in front, a shout rang up to the sky, from behind the high brown walls of the bull-ring. It was the welcome which the public gave their King and his bride as they appeared in the royal box.

We were too late to intercept Carmona; for as the royalties had taken their places, he was certain to be already in his, with his fiancee by his side.

Covered with dust, burnt by the sun which had shone hotly since Manzanares, all but spent with fatigue, I leaned back in my seat. For a moment I did not hear what Dick was saying, although I was conscious that he spoke; but suddenly the meaning of his words broke in on my tired brain.

"It'll be two hours before the King and Queen leave their box and lesser folks can move," he said. "I'm not going to have you sitting here in the heat and dust."

"I must wait till they come out," I answered dully. "It's the only way."

"No, it isn't. I told you Pilar'd sent me a ticket. The card says 'sombra,' so the seat's in the shade all right, and you're going to have it."

"But you?" I said. "Pilar would never forgive me—"

"She'd never forgive me if I didn't hand it over to you. But I'll get in somehow. It can cost me fifty dollars if it likes to slip past a policeman, but I guess the price won't stop me. I don't mind if I stand up in the callijon. I'm tall enough to see all I want, and more; and if a bull jumps over the barrera, as one did at Seville the other day, my legs are long enough to save me."

Ropes was to stay with the car and wait until we came again. Before that time my fate would be decided. Nothing could keep me from meeting Monica now; and nothing should keep her from me, if she loved me. If not—if after all I had been dreaming, why, she would be the Duchess of Carmona to-morrow.

Under horses' noses, between backs and bonnets of motors, we edged our way through the dense crowd of vehicles and people massed together on the baking plain outside the bull-ring. The circle which had been cleared for royalty had filled again now, like a sandbank which has caved in upon itself; but the spectacle on the other side of those steep brown walls had begun, and the main entrance was comparatively clear.

Armed with the ticket engraved with the magic words "Corrida Real" over a black and white sketch of a mounted picador, I was allowed to enter. But when I had passed along a corridor and through a door which opened into a crowded tendido, I heard Dick's voice at my ear. "Only twenty-five dollars after all," said he, "and I can sit on the steps. Grand! We're next to Tendido Number 9. I see Pilar; look—close to the end, front row."

After the silent rooms of the old Moorish house and the little patio with its tinkling fountain, the brilliant light and colour, the confused sounds and movement, the vast size of the bull-ring struck me fiercely between the eyes, bewildering sight and sense.

Seats were valuable in the tendidos for this great day, when almost every place meant a royal favour; but we were late, and instead of moving on to search for my twelve inches of plank or stone, I was thankful to squeeze in close to the entrance. I did not see Colonel O'Donnel, and though I was close to the famous Tendido Number 9 (which must have held every eye till the royalties came), I forgot to look for Pilar in that white-and-rose garden of Spanish loveliness.

The first act of the great royal bull-fight had begun. Twenty glittering, spangled espadas marched with elastic steps into the ring, followed by the yellow-trousered picadors on their sorry horses. The three gala coaches carrying the distinguished amateur picadors and their ducal patrons who graced this marriage feast, still circled picturesquely in the arena, making a pageant of the Middle Ages. The sun blazed on nodding ostrich plumes, gold embroidered hammercloths, dazzling liveries, powdered heads, and splendid horses in quaint harness, rich with gold and jewels. The three Dukes, owners of the coaches, had introduced the cavaliers they patronized to the King-President; the bride-Queen in her white mantilla and flowers of Spanish colours stood bowing in the glass frame of the royal box. Gaily decorated palcos, tendidos, grados, tier upon tier, half in sun, half in shadow, rose above the huge ring like so many terraced flower-beds, dazzling with the gold lace of uniforms and the bright tints of women's dresses softened by white mantillas. Over all was a fluttering of fans, like thousands of hovering butterflies; and a hum floated up loud as the humming of a million bees, to the blue dome of sky, where English and Spanish flags waved together.

Mechanically my eyes took in the splendid scene, as they searched for Monica; and finding her, for a time saw nothing else.

She was in a box near the royalties, and sat between her mother and the Duchess, with Carmona and some man whom I did not know, behind them. She was in a white dress and white mantilla, with pink and white malmaisons in her hair; and her face was pathetically pale in its frame of falling lace. In her hand was a fan with which to shut out such horrors of the fight as none but Spanish women born and bred dare trust themselves to see. My place was distant and far below; yet my eyes were keen, and it seemed to me that she looked thin and frail, though very beautiful. If for an instant, since Dick broke the news to me, I had doubted the loyalty of her heart, the sight of her sad young face would have driven doubt away. I was more than ever certain that in promising to marry Carmona she thought to save me from punishment threatened by him.

Neither he nor she guessed that I was near. But where did she believe me to be? Perhaps Carmona had said that for her sake he had let me fly danger after stabbing him in the cathedral, by hurrying back to England.

The Duke was leaning forward to speak to her. She did not look up at him, but let her eyes listlessly travel over the vast audience. I thought they lingered on Tendido Number 9, draped with flowered shawls of Andalucia, and crowded with pretty women. Suddenly she blushed, and turned away. I looked where she had looked, and knew what had brought the blood to her cheeks. Pilar, in rose colour, with a white mantilla and the orthodox malmaisons, of pink and crimson, was gazing up at the Carmona box, an imploring expression on her face. Pilar, too, was pale and thin. I realized more and more that nearly six weeks had been struck out of my life.

Each of the three coaches had in its turn stopped under the royal box, while a ducal patron presented his cavalier to the young King and his bride; now, the ring was being cleared as the magnificent amateur picadors mounted their horses, which had been led round by squires in the quaint dress of 1630. One of four dignified alguaziles in black velvet and lace doffed his plumed hat to the King as President of the fight, asking the key of the bull's cell. Down it flashed, while the music stopped as if awed into silence, and the alguazil spurred his stallion across the arena to fling into the montera of el Bunolero, janitor of the bull cells, the key he had received.

"Vivillo is fifth bull," I said to myself, repeating Dick's words; and there, too, was his name on the programme of the fight. Pilar's favourite had still a little time to draw the breath of life, stamping in the gloom of his narrow toril. Not yet had that untamed neck of his been stung by the rosetted dart flaunting his owner's colours; and much was to happen in the arena before Vivillo's brave beauty would call for the clapping of twice thirteen thousand hands.

First, the three noble amateurs, with their long sharp javelins, must each in turn play picador with grace to please a queen-bride, and save his horse's sides from goring horns. Then, when three bulls had died according to ancient, chivalrous custom (if the cavalier's skill served), without slaughter of horses, the corrida would go on in ordinary Spanish fashion of to-day, with all its sensational moments and its tragedies, until—Vivillo's time came.

As for me, I must sit until the leave-taking of the royalties and royal guests should empty also the Carmona box. I wondered, as the first bull rushed into the ring, whether the King and Queen would still be in their places when the door should open for Vivillo, or whether their departure would rob Carmona of the spectacle of his mean revenge. I hoped it would, for I could not bear that he should see the suffering he had inflicted on Pilar for my sake, and revel in it. Still, when he went I must go too; and I felt vaguely that I ought to be near Pilar—my loyal sister Pilar—during the act which would be tragical for her.

As Dick said, there were brilliant moments in the bull-fight; and the amateurs acquitted themselves in a way to deserve the enthusiasm of the crowd. The beautiful young Queen threw a jewel to each torero who finished a bull after the javelins of the cavaliers had done their work; and when the last of the brave trio had bowed himself out of the ring, began that phase of the sport which Spaniards know and love. The blindfolded horses trotted in, ridden by professional picadors with indifferent, sullen faces; and then a stir of excitement ran from tier to tier of the audience, as a breeze blows over a wheat-field. The first part had been but a pretty play; now was coming the real thing, with the best bulls, and the best espadas of Spain.

The bride in her white mantilla looked down at her fan, and counted the gilded ivory sticks, when the first bull charged the first horse. She, the Queen of Spain, must not seem to flinch, though her English eyes had never seen such crimson sights as these. This was the national sport; she must learn to understand that when men yelled, and even women cried "Buena vara!" it was not with joy because a horse's side was torn, but because a picador had made the perfect thrust. She must seem to love what the people loved, if she wished them to love her; but not far off sat another young girl in white, who had no such compelling obligations.

Monica, warned beforehand perhaps, when she was forced to come, put up her fan whenever a bull rushed towards a horse, and would no doubt have kept it there had not her mother spoken to her more than once, peremptorily. As for Pilar, though she did not lift her fan, she seemed to see nothing, for she sat with her head bowed, only starting and looking up when the horn sounded for a new bull.

At last there was no more question as to whether the King and Queen would stay to see Vivillo play his part. The fourth bull had been dragged away dead by the team of tasselled mules, and the piercing blast, which had grown to sound tragic in my ears, summoned Vivillo, all unknowing, to his fate. And the royalties kept their seats, though the afternoon waned, and shadow—like the creeping shadow of death—darkened two-thirds of the arena.

So keen was my sympathy with Pilar that I felt my throat contract and my mouth go dry. So must it be with her at this moment which called her brave favourite to his death; so, like mine, only faster and more thickly, must her heart be beating.

Could she, after all, bear the ordeal? Would she not turn and hurry out before the first picador drew the blood she had tried so hard to save? But no; she sat still, her eyes large, her face blanched, and one hand twisted in the folds of her lace mantilla as it rose and fell on her breast.

Before the dead was well out of the ring, and his red track sanded, the door of the toril was thrown open for the fifth bull, said never to be a coward. It was a compliment to Carmona and to Vivillo to be chosen for this position on the programme, since it has become a proverb that the pick of the corrida should be fifth on the list. It was also a compliment to Carmona that the King should wait to see how his Vivillo would die.

The bunolero sprang back as he opened the door, retiring more hastily than was his wont into the space between the barriers out of the bull's way. It was as if he, too, expected the new-comer to be something beyond the ordinary in ferocity or cunning; for Carmona's bulls, like those of the Muira breed, are famed for their terrible habit of ignoring the cloak and charging at the body of the man who holds it.

Some bulls had rushed into the arena and blindly attacked the first object which came within their dazed vision; but my heart had time to beat twice before that noble form, which I had last seen in peaceful pasture, deigned to show itself at the dark exit of the toril.

It was as if Vivillo wished to prove how he scorned the puny prick of that fish-hook dart hidden by a rosette of green and purple ribbon, supreme indifference to the strange scene which burst upon eyes accustomed for long to darkness, and haughty superiority to thirst and hunger which irritated weaker animals to frenzy. No one, seeing the great bull stand with his head up, questioning, surprised, could have mistaken his attitude for cowardice. There was something ominous, even terrible, in his pause; and it gave the waiting audience time to appreciate the magnificence of his proportions, the length and dagger-keenness of his horns, the rippling of the muscles under the brown satin of his skin, in the great chest and lean flanks.

"This is not a bull,—it is a mountain," shouted a voice; and other voices praised Vivillo's perfections, so soon to vanish off the earth. "Grandly armed!" "He would face a battalion!" "Let Fuentes look out for himself!"

For Fuentes, best espada left in Spain, bravest fighter of bulls according to the classic methods, was to give Vivillo the death stroke, when picadores and banderilleros had done with him.

The yells of the vast multitude in an instant changed the bull's proud astonishment to fury. He seemed to realize that this new world, so different from the old sweet, green one, was a world of enemies, every soul against him, and he was ready to fight them all to the death. He neither pawed the sand nor bellowed, for these are puerile betrayals of temper to which the noblest bulls do not descend. Like a tornado he swept across the ring, killed a horse with a single thrust, sent the picador crashing against the barrera; and quick as a wild cat, strong as an African lion, wheeled to lift another animal and its rider on his horns. Half the length of the arena he trotted, upholding both, whilst the audience rose to him and yelled admiration of his savage strength.

"This is like the good old days. You don't see such a bull in ten thousand," men said to each other, as Vivillo flung the dead horse on the sand, tumbling the picador over the barrera into the callijon, and raced off gamely to a third duel.

When he had killed three horses (knowing no distinction between their innocence and man's cruelty, after his shoulders had felt the lance) he was apparently as fresh as when he left the toril. At this stage of the death drama most bulls would be breathing hard; but though the brown velvet of Vivillo's neck was stained dark crimson, neither fatigue nor pain made his strong heart labour.

More horses were given him, to die as others had died, all save one, which the bull refused to touch because it was of the colour he knew and was friendly with at home. It was led at last unscathed; but Vivillo had now six horses to his credit, and his popularity with the audience had already risen far beyond that of his predecessors. Still, his activity, instead of diminishing, seemed to grow with the rising fever of his fury.

In ordinary cases the trumpet would now have sounded for the second act, dismissing the picadors and summoning the banderilleros; but Vivillo in his present condition was too formidable a foe to be teased by the bravest with barbed, beribboned darts; and "Caballos—caballos!" was the cry.

Four more sacrificial beasts were brought, and he dealt with all, so nearly goring one picador that an espada, dashing to the rescue, was raced to the barrier, and had his stocking crimsoned as he vaulted over it.

Vivillo's list of victims had now swelled to ten, and though he had accepted thirty-three varas, or thrusts of the lance, his great shoulders scarcely shuddered under the red rain of his blood. Still, the first act could not be further prolonged. The sharp, cruel blast of the cornet gave the signal for the second to begin.

Dick and I had not spoken, and I dared not look towards Pilar. As the crowd shouted an imperious demand for the great Fuentes to come into the ring as banderillero, it seemed to me that centuries were swept away by their wild voices; that this was not the bull-ring of Madrid, but the Coliseum of Rome.

Vivillo waited, his head up, undaunted; and though his face and attitude were menacing, the brown eyes, set wide apart, were radiantly innocent. He seemed a creature made up of nature's best, a product of blue sky, sweet meadow, and pure air; of his kind, perfection. Did he think now of his old home in the rich pasture-land, and the tinkle of the friendly cabestros' bells? If he did, the home-sick thought did not make him fear to face what was to come. Never once had he followed the example of two or three among his predecessors, and turned towards the shut door of the toril as if for refuge. Always he had faced the enemy; and now he rushed to play with his horns for the glittering banderillas which waited for his shoulders.

Fuentes was consenting to the wish of the public, but two ordinary banderilleros were to precede him. The famous matador, who was afterwards to kill this most popular bull of the day, would plant the last pair of the six.

The first man, sparkling in satin and silver, lifted on high his two barb-tipped sticks, gaily ornamented with tinsel paper, and called Vivillo from a distance. His mocking voice infuriated the bull, who rushed upon him; then, as he swayed lightly aside, it was all he could do to save himself from the great animal's sudden, swift turn, without placing either of his banderillas. Again and again the play was repeated, but the audience were saying that Vivillo was becoming crafty as Shylock. At last one gay-coloured stick—"half a pair"—hung from Vivillo's shoulders; twice and three times the attempt was made before the "pair" was complete; and the second banderillero succeeded no better. But as Fuentes entered the ring, condescending to play at the game of which he was once master, there went up a roar of applause. Fuentes never failed; and that trick of his—planting both feet on a handkerchief, nor deigning to move save for a swaying of the body while planting the two barbs—was famous, a sight worth seeing when the bull was even half as good as this. But for once even Fuentes' brilliant tactics were at a loss. Vivillo had brains, and used them. He used his eyes, too, before charging, which not one out of five hundred bulls can do; and if Fuentes played with him, he played also, a game whose zest came from a hint of pressing danger. Once it seemed that Vivillo would be over the barrera, in the callijon, and there was a stampede of all the onlookers there. Again he threatened to demolish the wooden barrier with his horns, and there was a wilder scramble than before. But the banderillas were planted at last, and the blood on Vivillo's brown shoulders lay like a crimson cloak. The great round of applause was as much for the bull as for the banderillero; and every face in the audience was tense with excitement as the horn sounded for the death scene. With such a king of the arena anything might happen. It was well that a master like Fuentes was the espada who would deal with him, or he might deal with the espada.

And so it was to end in the usual tragedy, and after a few more brilliant moments of play the brave heart of the beast must feel the sword. I had known, of course, that it must be so, and yet until now it had not seemed a cold certainty. Perhaps I had vaguely hoped that Vivillo would vault the barrera, and refuse to be coaxed back again; but, even if he had, he could not have saved himself, and might have had to die some death less glorious than by the espada's blade.

Fuentes was bowing under the royal box, asking the King-President's gracious permission to kill Vivillo as so noble a bull should be killed. Then, sword and red muleta in hand, he went to meet Vivillo, an alert look on his face; for this was no common res, but a brave and wary foeman, most worthy of his steel.

The deep silence of the thirteen thousand spectators was as great a compliment as could be paid to man or bull, and Fuentes knew it. He knew that the audience expected such play, before the death stroke, as had not been seen in Spain for years, and he did not mean to disappoint them. Still marvellously fresh, considering his doughty feats and loss of blood, Vivillo showed no distress. But he had become visibly thoughtful, as if realizing at last that this was no wild sport, but the end of all things.