“Guns again?” he suggested, with a short
laugh.
“I certainly heard something,” Mon answered.
And rising briskly from his chair, he went to the
window. Sarrion followed him, and they stood side
by side looking out over the valley. At that moment
that which was more of a vibration than a sound came
to their ears across the mountains—deep
and foreboding.
“I thought I was right,” said Mon, in
little more than a whisper. “The Carlists
are abroad, my friend, and I, who am a man of peace
must get within the city walls.”
With an easy laugh he said good-bye. In a few
minutes he was in the saddle riding leisurely down
the valley of the Wolf after Juanita—with
Marcos de Sarrion in between them on the road.
War’s alarm Juanita’s carriage
emerged from the valley of the Wolf into the plain
at sunset. She could see that the driver paid
but little heed to his horses. His attention
wandered constantly to the mountains. For, instead
of looking to the road in front, his head was ever
to the right, and his eyes searched the plain and
the bare brown hills.
At last he pulled up and, turning on his box, held
up one finger.
“Listen, Senorita,” he said, and his dark
eyes were alight with excitement.
Juanita stood up and listened, looking westward as
he did. The sound was like the sound of thunder,
but shorter and sharper.
“What is it?”
“The Carlists—the sons of dogs!”
he answered, with a laugh, and he shook his whip towards
the mountains. “See,” he said, gathering
up the reins again, “that dust on the road to
the west—that is the troops marching out
from Pampeluna. We are in it again—in
it again!”
At the gate of the city there was a crowd of people.
The carriage had to stand aside against the trees
to let pass the guns which clattered down the slope.
The men were laughing and shouting to each other.
The officers, erect on their horses, seemed to think
only of the safety of the guns as a woman entering
a ballroom reviews her jewelery with a quick comprehensive
glance.
At the guard-house, beneath the second gateway, there
occurred another delay. The driver was a Pampeluna
man and well-known to the sentries. But they
did not recognise his passenger and sent for the officer
on duty.
“The Senorita Juanita de Mogente,” he
muttered, as he came into the road—a stout
and grizzled warrior smoking a cigarette. “Ah,
yes!” he said, with a grave bow at the carriage
door. “I remember you as a schoolgirl.
I remember now. Forgive the delay and pass in—Senora
de Sarrion.”
Juanita was ushered into the little bare waiting-room
in the convent school of the Sisters of the True Faith
in the Calle de la Dormitaleria. It is a small,
square apartment at the end of a long and dark passage.
The day filters dimly into it through a barred window
no larger than a pocket-handkerchief. Juanita
stood on tiptoe and looked into a narrow alley.
On the sill of this window Marcos had stood to wrench
apart the bars of the window immediately overhead,
through which he had lifted her one cold night—years
and years ago, it seemed.
