She paused. Mon was slowly drawing his gloves through his hands which were white and smooth.

"That is the difference between you," she continued. "You wear gloves. Marcos takes hold of life with his bare hand. You may be more cunning, but Marcos outwits you. The mind seeks but the heart finds. Your mind may be subtle—but Marcos has a better heart."

Mon had risen. He stood with his face half turned away from her so that she could only see his profile. And for a moment she was sorry for him; that one moment which always mars an earthly victory.

He turned away from her and walked slowly towards the library window which stood open and gave passage to the sound of moving cups and saucers. We all carry with us through life the remembrance of certain words probably forgotten by the speaker. A few bear the keener, sharper memory of words unspoken. Juanita never forgot the silence of Evasio Mon as he walked away from her.

A moment later she heard him laughing and talking in the library.

He had come on horseback and Sarrion accompanied him to the stables on his departure. They were both young for their years. The Spaniards of the north are thin and lithe and long-lived. Sarrion offered his hand for Mon's knee, who with this aid sprang into the saddle.

He turned and looked towards the terrace.

"Juanita," he said, and paused. "She is no longer a child. One hopes that she may have a happy life ... seeing that so many do not."

Sarrion made no answer.

"We are not weaklings," continued Mon lightly. "You, and Marcos and I. We may sweat and toil as we will—but believe me, there is more power in Juanita's little finger. It is the casting vote—amigo—the casting vote."

He waved a salutation as he rode away.



CHAPTER XXIX

LA MAIN DE FER Juanita was very early astir the next morning. The house was peculiarly quiet, but she knew that Marcos, if he had been abroad, had now returned; for Perro was lying on the terrace in the sunlight watching the library window.

Juanita went to that room and there found Marcos writing letters. A map of the Valley of the Wolf lay open on the table beside him.

"You are always writing letters," she said. "You began writing them on the splash-board of the carriage at the mouth of the valley and you have been doing it ever since."

"They are making use of my knowledge of the valley," he replied. He continued his task after a very quick glance up at her. Juanita had found out that he rarely looked at her.

"I am not at all tired after our adventure," she said. "I made up last night for the want of sleep. Do I look tired?"

"Not at all," answered Marcos, glancing no higher than her waist.

"But I had a dream," she said. "It was so vivid that I am not sure now that it was a dream. I am not sure that I did not in reality get out of bed quite early in the morning, before daylight, when the moon was just touching the mountains, and look out of my window. And the terrace, Marcos, was covered with soldiers; rows and rows of them, like shadows. And at the end, beneath my window, stood a group of men. Some were officers; one looked like General Pacheco, fat with a chuckling laugh; another seemed to be Captain Zeneta—the friend who stood by us in the chapel of Our Lady of the Shadows—who was saying his prayers, you remember. Most young men are too conceited to say their prayers nowadays. And there were two civilians, in riding-boots all dusty, who looked singularly like you and Uncle Ramon. It was an odd dream, Marcos—was it not?"

"Yes," answered he with a laugh. "Do not tell it to the wrong people as Joseph did."

"No, your reverence," she said. She stood looking at him with grave eyes.

"Is there going to be a battle?" she asked, curtly.

"Yes."

"Where?"

He pointed down into the valley with his pen.

"Just above the bridge if it all comes off as they have planned."

She went out on to the terrace and looked down into the valley, which was peaceful enough in the morning light. The thin smoke of the pine wood-fires rose from the chimneys in columns of brilliant blue. The sheep on the slopes across the valley were calling to their lambs. Then Juanita returned to the library window and stood on the threshold, with brooding eyes and a bright patch of colour in her cheeks.

"Will you do me a favour?" she asked.

"Of course."

He lifted his pen from the paper, but did not look up.

"If there is a battle—if there is any fighting, will you take great care of yourself? It would be so terrible if anything happened to you ... for Uncle Ramon I mean."

"Yes," answered Marcos, gravely. "I understand. I promise to take care."

Juanita still lingered at the window.

"And you always keep your promises, don't you? To the letter?"

"Why shouldn't I?"

"No, of course not. It is characteristic of you, that is all. Your promise is a sort of rock that nothing can move. Women, you know, make a promise and then ask to be let off; you would not do that?"

"No," answered Marcos, quite simply.

In Navarre the hours of meals are much the same as those that rule in England to-day. At one o'clock luncheon both Marcos and Sarrion were at home. The valley seemed quiet enough. The soldiers of Juanita's dream seemed to have vanished like the shadows to which she compared them.

"I am sure," said Cousin Peligros, while they were still at the table, "that the sound of firing approaches. I have a very delicate hearing. All my senses are very highly developed. The sound of the firing is nearer, Marcos."

"Zeneta is retreating slowly before the enemy, with his small force," explained Marcos.

"But why is he doing that? He must surely know that there are ladies at Torre Garda."

"Ladies are not articles of war," said Juanita with a frivolous disregard of Cousin Peligros' reproving face. "And this is war."

As she spoke Marcos rose and quitted the room after glancing at his watch. Juanita followed him.

"Marcos," she said, in the hall, having closed the dining-room door behind her. "Will you tell me what time it will begin?"

"Zeneta is timed to retreat across the bridge at three o'clock. The enemy will, it is hoped, follow him."

"And where will you be?"

"I shall be with Pacheco and his staff on the hill behind Pedro's mill. You will see a little flag wherever Pacheco is."

Cousin Peligros' delicate hearing had not been deceived. The firing was now close at hand. The valley takes a turn to the left below the ridge and upon the hillside above this corner the white irregular line of smoke now became visible.

In a few minutes the dark mass of Zeneta's men appeared on the road at the corner. He was before his time. The men were running. They raised the dust like a troop of sheep and moved in a halo of it. Every hundred yards they stopped and fired a volley. They were acting with perfect regularity and from a distance looked like toy soldiers. They were retreating in good order and the sound of their volleys came at regular intervals. On the bridge they halted. They were going to make a stand here, as would seem natural. Had they had artillery they could have effectually held this strong and narrow place.

It now became apparent that they were a woefully small detachment. They could not spare men to take up positions on the rocky hillside behind them.

There was a pause. The Carlists were waiting for their skirmishers to come in from heights above the road.

Sarrion and Juanita stood at the edge of the terrace. Sarrion was watching with a quick and comprehensive glance.

"Is General Pacheco a good general?" asked Juanita.

"Excellent."

Sarrion did not comment further on this successful soldier.

"They played me false," the General had told him indignantly a few hours earlier. "They promised me a good sum—yes a sufficient sum. But when the time came the money was not forthcoming. An awkward position; but I found a way out of it."

"By being loyal," suggested Sarrion with a short laugh and there the conversation ceased.

Juanita looked across the valley towards Pedro's mill. There was no flag there. All the valley was peaceful enough, giving in the brilliant sunshine no glint of sword or bayonet.

On the bridge, the little knot of men awaited the advent of the Carlists forming up round the corner. In a moment these came, swarming over the road and the hillside. The roadway was packed with them, the rocks and the bushes above the river seemed alive with them. They fired independently, and the hillside was white in a moment. The royalist troops on the bridge fired one volley and then turned. They ran straight along the road. Some threw down their knapsacks. One or two stopped, seemed to hesitate and then laid them down on the road like a tired child. Others limped to the side and sat there.

All the while the Carlists came on. The rear ranks were still coming round the corner. The skirmishers were already across the bridge. There was only one place for Zeneta's men to run to now—the castle of Torre Garda. They were already at the foot of the slope. Juanita and Sarrion could distinguish the slim form of their commander walking along the road behind his men, sword in hand. Sometimes he ran a few steps, but for the most part he walked with long, steady strides, shepherding his men.

They began to climb the slope, and Zeneta took up his position on a rock jutting out of the hillside. He stood on tiptoe and watched the bridge. The last of the Carlists were on it now. Juanita could see his eager face, with intrepid eyes alert, and lips apart, drawn back over his teeth. She glanced at Sarrion, whose lips were the same. His eyes glittered. He was biting his lower lip.

As the last man ran across the bridge on the heels of his comrades, Zeneta looked across the valley towards the water mill. He waved his handkerchief high above his head. A little flag fluttered above the trees growing round the mill-wheel.

Cousin Peligros being only human now came to the terrace to see what was happening. She had taken the precaution of putting on her mittens and opening her parasol.

"What is the meaning of this noise?" she asked; but neither Sarrion nor Juanita seemed to hear her. They were watching the little flag, which seemed to be descending the hill.

So close beneath the house were Zeneta's men now, that those on the terrace could hear his voice.

"The bridge," said Sarrion, under his breath. "Look at the bridge!"

It was half hidden in the smoke that still hovered in the air, but something was taking place there. Men were running hither and thither. The sunlight glittered on uniform and bayonet.

"Guns!" said Sarrion curtly, and as he spoke the whole valley shook beneath their feet. A roar seemed to arise from the river and spread all up the hills, and simultaneously a cloak of white smoke was laid over the green slopes.

Juanita saw Zeneta stand for a moment, with sword upheld, while his men gathered round him. Then with a wild shout of exultation he led them down the hill again. Before he had run ten paces he fell—his feet seemed to slip from under him, and he lay at full length for a moment—then he was up again and at the head of his men.

A bullet came singing up over the low brushwood and a distant tinkle of falling glass told that it had found its billet in a window. The bushes in the garden seemed suddenly alive with rustling life and Sarrion dragged Juanita back from the balustrade.

"No—no!" she said angrily.

"Yes—I promised Marcos," answered Sarrion with his arm round her waist.

In a moment they were in the library where they found Cousin Peligros in an easy chair with folded hands and the face of a very early Christian martyr.

"I have never been treated like this before," she said severely.

Sarrion stood at the window, keeping Juanita in.

"It will be all over in a few minutes," he said. "Holy Virgin! What a lesson for them."

The din was terrible. The lady of delicate hearing placed her hands over her ears not forgetting to curl her little finger in the manner deemed irresistible by her generation. Quite suddenly the firing ceased as if by the turning of a tap.

"There," said Sarrion, "it is over. Marcos said they were to be taught a lesson. They have learnt it."

He quitted the room taking his hat which he had thrown aside.

Juanita went to the terrace. She could see nothing. The whole valley was hidden in smoke which rolled upward in yellow clouds. The air choked her. She came back to the library, coughing, and went towards the door.

"Juanita," said Cousin Peligros, "I forbid you to leave the room. I absolutely refuse to be left alone."

"Then call your maid," said Juanita, patiently.

"Where are you going?"

"I am going to follow Uncle Ramon down to the valley. There must be hundreds of wounded. I can do something——"

"Then I forbid you to go. It is permissible for Marcos to identify himself with such proceedings—in protection of those whom Providence has placed under his care. Indeed I should expect it of him. It is his duty to defend Torre Garda."

Juanita looked at the supine form in the easy chair.

"Yes," she answered. "And I am mistress of Torre Garda."

Which, perhaps, had a double meaning, for when she closed the door—not without emphasis—Cousin Peligros sat upright with a start.

Juanita hurried out of the house and ran down the road winding on the slope to the village. The smoke choked her; the air was impregnated with sulphur. It seemed impossible that anybody could have lived through these hellish minutes that were passed. In front of her she saw Sarrion hurrying in the same direction. A moment later she gave a little cry of joy. Marcos was riding up the slope at a gallop. He pulled up when he saw his father and by the time he had quitted the saddle, Juanita was with him.

Marcos' face was gray beneath the sunburn. His eyes were bloodshot and his lips were pressed upward in a line of deadly resolution. It was the face of a man who had seen something that he would never forget. He looked at his father.

"Evasio Mon," he said.

"Killed?"

Marcos nodded his head.

"You did not do it?" said Sarrion sharply.

"No. They found him among the Carlists, There were five or six priests. It was Zeneta—wounded himself—who recognised him and told me. He was not dead when Zeneta found him—and he spoke. 'Always the losing game,' he said. Then he smiled—and died."

Sarrion turned and led the way slowly back again towards the house. Juanita seemed to have forgotten her intention of going to the valley to offer help to the nursing-sisters who lived in the village.

Marcos' horse, the Moor, was shaking and dragged on the bridle which he had slipped over his arm. He jerked angrily at the reins, looking back with a little exclamation of impatience. Juanita took the bridle from his arm and led the horse which followed her quietly enough. She said nothing and asked no questions. But she was watching Marcos' face—wondering, perhaps, if it would ever soften again.

Sarrion was the first to speak.

"Poor Mon," he said, half addressing Juanita. "He was never a fortunate man. He took the wrong turning years ago. He abandoned the Church in order to ask a woman to marry him. But she had scruples. She thought, or she was made to think, that her duty lay in another direction. And Mon's life ... well ...!"

He shrugged his shoulders.

"I know," said Juanita quietly ... "all about it."



CHAPTER XXX

THE CASTING VOTE There is in one corner of the little churchyard of Torre Garda a square mound which marks the burial-place, in one grave, of four hundred Carlists. The Wolf, it is said, carried as many more to the sea.

General Pacheco completed his teaching at the mouth of the valley where the Carlists had left in a position (impregnable from the front) a strong detachment to withstand the advance of any reinforcements that might be sent from Pampeluna to the relief of Captain Zeneta and his handful of men. These were taken in the rear by the force under General Pacheco himself and annihilated. This is, however, a matter of history as is also the reputation of Pacheco. "A great general—a brute," they say of him in Spain to this day.

By sunset all was quiet again at Torre Garda. The troops quitted the village as unobtrusively as they had come. They had lost but few men and half a dozen wounded were left behind in the village. The remainder were moved to Pampeluna. The Carlist list of wounded was astonishingly small. General Pacheco had the reputation of moving quickly. He was rarely hampered by his ambulance and never by the enemy's wounded. He was a great general.

Cousin Peligros did not appear at dinner. She had an attack of nerves instead.

"I understand nerves," said Juanita lightly when she announced that Cousin Peligros' chair would remain vacant. "Was I not educated in a convent? You need not be anxious. Yes—she will take a little soup—a little more than that. And all the other courses."

After dinner Cousin Peligros notified through her maid that she felt well enough to see Marcos. When he returned from this interview he joined Sarrion and Juanita in the drawing-room, and he looked grave.

"You have seen for yourself that there is not much the matter with her," said Juanita, watching his face.

"Yes," he answered rather absent-mindedly. "There is not much the matter with her."

He did not sit down but stood with a preoccupied air and looked at the wood-fire which was still grateful in the evening at such an altitude as that of Torre Garda.

"She will not stay," he said at last. "She says she is going to-morrow."

Sarrion gave a short laugh and turned over the newspaper that he was reading. Juanita was reading an English book, with a dictionary which she never consulted when Marcos was near. She looked over its pages into the fire.

"Then let her go," she said slowly and distinctly. And in a silence which followed, the colour slowly mounted to her face. Marcos glanced at her and spoke at once.

"There is no question of doing anything else," he said, with a laugh that sounded uneasy. "She will have nerves until she sees a lamp-post again. She is going to Madrid."

"Ah!"

"And she wants you to go with her and stay," said Marcos, bluntly.

"It is very kind of her," answered Juanita in a cool and even voice. "You know, I am afraid Cousin Peligros and I should not get on very well—not if we sat indoors for long together, and kept our hands white."

"Then you do not care to go to Madrid with her?" inquired Marcos.

Juanita seemed to weigh the pros and cons of the matter with her head at a measuring angle while she looked into the fire.

"No ... No," she answered. "I think not, thank you."

"You know," Marcos explained with an odd ring of excitement in his voice. "I am afraid we shall have a bad name all over Spain after this. They always did think that we were only brigands. It will be difficult to get anybody to come here."

Juanita made no answer to this. Sarrion was reading the paper very attentively. But it was he who spoke first.

"I must go to Saragossa," he said, without looking up from his paper. "Perhaps Juanita will take compassion on my solitude there."

"I always feel that it is a pity to go away from Torre Garda just as the spring is coming," said she, conversationally. "Don't you think so?"

She glanced at Marcos as she spoke, but the remark must have been addressed to Sarrion, whose reply was inaudible. For some reason the two men seemed ill at ease and tongue-tied. There was a dull glow in Marcos' eyes. Juanita was quite cool and collected and mistress of the situation.

"You know," said Marcos at length in his direct way, "that it is only of your happiness that I am thinking—you must do what you like best."

"And you know that I subscribe to Marcos' polite desire," said Sarrion with a light laugh.

"I know you are an old dear," answered Juanita, jumping up and throwing aside her book. "And now I am going to bed."

She kissed Sarrion and smoothed back his gray hair with a quick and light touch.

"Good-night, Marcos," she said as she passed the door which he held open. She gave him the friendly little nod of a comrade—but she did not look at him.

The next morning Cousin Peligros took her departure from Torre Garda.

"I wash my hands," she said, with the usual gesture, "of the whole affair."

As her maid was seated in the carriage beside her she said no more. It remained uncertain whether she washed her hands of the Carlist war or of Juanita. She gave a sharp sigh and made no answer to Sarrion's hope that she would have a pleasant journey.

"I have arranged," said Marcos, "that two troopers accompany you as far as Pampeluna, though the country will be quiet enough to-day. Pacheco has pacified it."

"I thank you," replied Cousin Peligros, who included domestic servants in her category of persons in whose presence it is unladylike to be natural.

She bowed to them and the carriage moved away. She was one of those fortunate persons who never see themselves as others see them, but move through existence surrounded by a halo, or a haze, of self-complacency, through which their perception cannot penetrate. The charitable were ready to testify that there was no harm in her. Hers was merely one of a million lives in which man can find no fault and God no fruit.

Soon after her departure Sarrion and Marcos set out on horseback towards the village. There was another traveler there awaiting their Godspeed on a longer journey, towards a peace which he had never known. It was in the house of the old cura of Torre Garda that Sarrion looked his last on the man with whom he had played in childhood's days—with whom he had never quarrelled, though he had tried to do so often enough. The memory he retained of Evasio Mon was not unpleasant; for he was smiling as he lay in the darkened room of the priest's humble house. He was bland even in death.

"I shall go and place some flowers on his grave," said Juanita, as they sat on the terrace after luncheon and Sarrion smoked his cigarettes. "Now that I have forgiven him."

Marcos was sitting sideways on the broad balustrade, swinging one foot in its dusty riding-boot. He could see Juanita from where he sat. He usually could see her from where he elected to sit. But when she turned he was never looking at her. She had only found this out lately.

"Have you forgiven him already?" asked he, with his dark eyes fixed on her half averted face. "I knew that it was easy to forget the dead, but to forgive ..."

"Oh—it was not when he was killed that I forgave him."

"Then when was it?"

Juanita laughed lightly and shook her head.

"I am not going to tell you that," she answered. "It is a secret between Evasio Mon and myself. He will understand when I place the flowers on his grave ... as much as men ever do understand."

She vouchsafed no explanation of this ambiguous speech, but sat in silence looking with contemplative eyes across the valley. Sarrion was seated a few yards away. At times he glanced through the cigarette smoke at Juanita and Marcos. Suddenly he drew in his feet and sat upright.

"Dinner at seven to-night," he said, briskly. "If you have no objection."

"Why?" asked Juanita.

"I am going to Saragossa."

"To-night?" she asked hastily and stopped short. Marcos sat motionless. Sarrion lighted another cigarette and forgot to answer her question. Juanita flushed and held her lips between her teeth. Then she turned her head and looked at Sarrion from the corner of her eyes. She searched him from his keen, brown face—said by some to be the handsomest face in Spain—to his neat and firmly planted feet. But there was nothing written for her to read. He had forced her hand and she did not know whether he had done it on purpose or not. She knew her own mind, however. She was called upon to decide her whole life then and there. And she knew her own mind.

"Seven o'clock," said the mistress of Torre Garda, rising and going towards the house. "I will go at once and see to it."

She, presumably, carried out her intention of visiting Evasio Mon's grave, and perhaps said a prayer in the little chapel near to it for the repose of the soul of the man whom she had forgiven so suddenly and completely. She did not return to the terrace at all events, and the Sarrions went about their own affairs during the afternoon without seeing her again.

At dinner Sarrion was unusually light-hearted and Juanita accommodated herself to his humour with that ease which men so rarely understand in women and seldom acquire for themselves. Sarrion spoke of Saragossa as if it were across the road and intimated that he would be coming and going between the two houses during the spring, and until the great heats made the plains of Aragon uninhabitable.

"But," he said, "you see how it is with Marcos. The Valley of the Wolf is his care and he dare not leave it for many days together."

When the parting came Juanita made light of it, herself turning Sarrion's fur collar up about his ears and buttoning his coat. For despite his sixty years he was a hardy man, and never made use of a closed carriage. It was a dark night with no moon.

"It is all the better," said Marcos. "If the horses can see nothing, they cannot shy."

Marcos accompanied his father down the slope to the great gate where the drawbridge had once been, sitting on the front seat beside him in the four-wheeled dogcart. They left Juanita standing in the open doorway, waving her hand gaily, her slim form outlined against the warm lamplight within the house.

At the drawbridge Marcos bade his father farewell. They had parted at the same spot a hundred times before. There was but the one train from Pampeluna to Saragossa and both had made the journey many times. There was no question of a long absence from each other; but this parting was not quite like the others. Neither said anything except those conventional words of farewell which from constant use have lost any meaning they ever had.

Sarrion gathered the reins in his gloved hands, glanced back over the collar which Juanita had vigorously pulled up about his ears, and with a nod, drove away into the night.

When Marcos, who walked slowly up the slope, returned to the house he found it in darkness. The servants had gone to bed. It was past ten o'clock. The window of his own study had been left open and the lamp burnt there. He went in, extinguished the lamp, and taking a candle went up-stairs to his own room. He did not stay in the room, however, but went out to the balcony which ran the whole length of the house.

In a few minutes his father's carriage must cross the bridge with that hollow sound of wheels which Evasio Mon had mistaken for guns.

A breeze was springing up and the candle which Marcos had set on a table near the open window guttered. He blew it out and went out in the darkness. He knew where to find the chair that stood on the balcony just outside his window and sat down to listen for the rumble of the carriage across the bridge.

He turned his head at the sound of a window being opened and Perro who lay at his feet lifted his nose and sniffed gently. A shaft of light lay across the balcony at the far end of the house. Juanita had opened her shutters. She knew that Sarrion must pass the bridge in a few minutes and was going to listen for him.

Marcos leant forward and touched Perro who understood and was still. For a moment Juanita appeared on the balcony, stepping to the railing and back again. The shaft of light then remained half obscured by her shadow as she stood in the window. She was not going to bed until she had heard Sarrion cross the bridge.

Thus they waited and in a few minutes the low growling voice of the river was dominated by the hollow echo of the bridge. Sarrion had gone.

Juanita went within her room and extinguished the lamp. It was a warm night and the pine trees gave out a strong and subtle scent such as they only emit in spring. The bracken added its discreet breath hardly amounting to a tangible odour. There were violets, also, not far away.

Perro at Marcos' feet, stirred uneasily and looked up into his master's face. Instinctively Marcos turned to look over his shoulder. Juanita was standing close behind him.

"Marcos," she said, quietly, "you remember—long, long ago—in the cloisters at Pampeluna, when I was only a child—you made a promise. You promised that you would never interfere in my life."

"Yes."

"I have come ..." she paused and passing in front of him, stood there with her back to the balustrade and her hands behind her in an attitude which was habitual to her. "I have come," she began again deliberately, "to let you off that promise—Not that you have kept it very well, you know—"

She broke off and gave a short laugh, such as a man may hear perhaps once in his whole life, and hearing it, must know that he has not lived in vain.

"But I don't mind," she said.

She moved uneasily. For her eyes, growing accustomed to the darkness, could discern his face. She returned to the spot where Marcos had first discovered her, behind his chair.

"And, Marcos—you made another promise. You said that we were only going to play at being married—a sort of game."

"Yes," he answered steadily. He did not turn. He never saw her hands stretched out towards him. Then suddenly he gave a start and sat still as stone. Her hands were on his hair, soft as the touch of a bird. Her fingers crept down his forehead and closed over his eyes firmly and tenderly—a precaution which was unnecessary in the darkness—for she was leaning over his chair and her hair, dusky as the night itself, fell over his face like a curtain.

"Then I think it is a stupid game—and I do not want to play it any longer ... Marcos."

THE END