Chapter XVI: Part 16

"You're a good boy, Pepito." He turned to Dugdale. "Grampus, when shall I be fit to ride?"

"Good heavens! Not for a long time. Look here, Lumsden, I'm not going to have my cure spoilt and my career ruined by you going raiding before you're fit. Don't laugh. I'm in dead earnest. I'm sick and tired of playing the fool at Oxford. As soon as I get home I'm going to be a doctor. New idea, you know; fresh air and cold water. The pater will laugh himself into a fit when I tell him; but don't you see, if you back me up, and I can show you as my first case--why, bet you the old boy comes round and doubles my allowance, to encourage me. See?"

"All right!" said Jack, laughing. "But you must finish my cure quickly, for the instant I can manage it I'm going to ride over to Carinena."

"What for? What is there special about Carinena?"

"Well, I've a--a friend there I want specially to see."

"H'm! A friend? Bet you my first year's fees it's a girl. Now look here, Lumsden, don't be a fool. An Englishman oughtn't to marry till he's thirty at least. I've got ten years yet, and it won't be too much. It takes time to be able to face a girl without flinching, and for my part I'd rather learn Greek verbs than--"

"Oh, shut up!" exclaimed Jack. "Who said anything about marrying? Juanita--"

"Oho! Juanita! Sorry for you, my boy; no cure for that complaint. Well, I'll take care of you, but it'll be a long time yet before you can ride."

Nearly a month passed away before Jack, after a few experiments, was pronounced fit to undertake the ride to Carinena. The period of waiting was diversified by one or two expeditions against French convoys, in which Antonio achieved brilliant successes. Jack chafed at being obliged to remain inactive, and to share in these raids merely in imagination. He spent hour after hour in attempting to decipher the postscript of Don Fernan's letter, always without success. Remembering the enigmatical phrase in the letter he himself had received in Salamanca, "Palafox the Man, Palafox the Name", he believed that the key must be contained in that; but though he tried to fit it to the ciphered message, and made considerable demands on Dugdale's patience, he drew no nearer to solving the puzzle, and finally gave it up in disgust.

At length the day arrived when, feeling well and strong, he set off on his ride to the convent. Pepito had several times conveyed verbal messages between him and Juanita, but nothing had been committed to paper for fear lest it should fall into the hands of the French. Guided by the boy, who rode before him, he reached the convent in the afternoon of a beautiful April day, and was at once admitted to the presence of Juanita, with whom he found the old duenna he had seen in Saragossa.

Though Juanita greeted him with as much cordiality as ever, he was conscious of a slight difference in her manner; there was not quite the same frank comradeship she had shown in Saragossa.

"I am very glad to see you looking so well, Jack," she said. "Will you take a cup of chocolate?"

"Thanks!" replied Jack briefly. He sipped it for a brief interval without speaking, then said suddenly: "I say, Juanita, I am mighty glad you escaped, you know. It was good of Padre Consolacion to help you--after trying to persuade you to marry Miguel, too. Tell me about it."

Without her usual animation Juanita recounted how she had been captured as she neared Morata by a party of troopers, among whom she had recognized Perez, Miguel's one-eyed man. She had been treated kindly enough by the wife of a colonel of chasseurs, who, however, irritated her beyond endurance by constant reference to her approaching marriage. Miguel himself had only seen her once. He had asked what had become of her father's old servant Jose, and shown some annoyance when she refused to answer. But she had had another and a more frequent visitor. After the capitulation, Padre Consolacion had been surprised to find that, though he had been as consistent an opponent as Don Basilio and Santiago Sass, he had not met with the same fate at the hands of the French. He could only conclude that he owed his security to the good offices of Miguel, whom, however, he now held in utter abhorrence. Making his escape from the city, he had gone into hiding at Morata, where he soon learnt of what had befallen Juanita. It was not difficult for him, with the assistance of the people of the house, to obtain secret interviews with her. On the day before Miguel went with Commissary Taberne on the foraging expedition, Juanita learnt from the colonel's wife that pressure was to be brought to bear in high quarters for the purpose of bringing about her marriage with Don Miguel. She sent a message by a secret channel to Padre Consolacion, informing him of this alarming news. On the next evening, almost at the moment when Jack was surprising the commissary, she had slipped out of the house in the dress of one of the Spanish maid-servants, fled to where the priest was awaiting her, and by him was escorted to the convent, where she was joined in a few days by the duenna, after the sudden swoop of Antonio had cleared the place of French.

"The padre is a trump," said Jack. "I confess I didn't like him in Saragossa; but then, of course, he hadn't found Miguel out. I thought he must be either stupid or something worse. I shall do him more justice in future."

He would not perhaps have been so cordial if he had known that it was to Padre Consolacion he owed the strange alteration in Juanita's manner which had puzzled him. When he left her in the convent, the padre's last words had been: "Now, querida mia, though I have helped you to escape a marriage with a traitor and a villain, remember I shall not approve, I shall forbid, your marriage with a heretic. You will understand me."

All unconscious of this, Jack waxed eloquent in praise of the padre, and went on: "Well now, I've something to tell you besides what you have heard from Pepito. You remember that a letter left with General Palafox for my father disappeared--a letter about your property?"

"Yes. I hate the sound of the word 'property'."

"I have the letter. It was--perhaps you guess--in the possession of Miguel."

He proceeded to tell the whole story. Juanita listened with growing interest, and when it was concluded every trace of her stiffness had passed away.

"Ah, Jack!" she cried, "now we can get this wretched treasure that has nearly cost your life--for but for it you would never have come to Saragossa--and then--oh! do you think we can get away to England?"

"I'm very sorry, Juanita. I was just going to tell you that I'm afraid we can't get the treasure."

"Why not? You said the letter was about it."

"So it is. But, unfortunately, the secret of its whereabouts is locked up in a postscript--a single line of capital letters, which I can't read. It is in cipher."

"Show it to me. You have it with you?"

Jack took out the paper, and unfolded it before her. She read over the postscript letter by letter:

S E O S F L S A E O A P E J E J P J J F J P J X P A P P F

"Certainly a most curious-looking sentence," said Juanita. "And have you no clue at all?"

"None whatever. I thought I had. I made sure I had, but when I tried to work it out in the cipher it proved useless."

"What was it?"

"Well, I had never told anyone. Your father said I was to burn the letter as soon as I received it, and I did so; but now that things have altogether changed, there can be no harm in telling you all about it. In the letter I received at Salamanca, Don Fernan said that I was to remember the phrase, 'Palafox the Man, Palafox the Name'. It occurred to me, of course, that the clue to the cipher might be found in that phrase; but, try it as I might, I couldn't make anything of it. You see, the cipher message contains all the letters of the word Palafox, but there are a number of J's and other letters that have nothing to do with it."

"And you gave it up!" exclaimed Juanita, with some scorn. "Just like a boy!"

"Really, Juanita--" began Jack, but she interrupted him.

"Don't talk. Let me see if I've a little more perseverance. I count six P's, three A'S, one L, three F's, two O's, and one X; that accounts for PALAFOX. Why are there so many P's? Besides, there are four E'S, six J's, and three S's. What can EJS stand for? EJS, ESJ, JES, JSE--I see it! Take an O out of PALAFOX and you have JOSE. That is the name of our old servant, and of the Captain-General too. Now, do you see, Senor Don Juan?--the key to the cipher is JOSE PALAFOX."

"What an ass I am!" said Jack. "It never struck me that Palafox's Christian name might be included. But what then? The only ciphering I ever did was in money sums, and weights and measures. How do you work out the thing now?"

"Why, it's clear that my father's message is made up of the words JOSE PALAFOX, which have only nine different letters. It's not likely that the message contains only nine letters; therefore one letter of the cipher probably stands for several, and I shouldn't wonder if all the letters of the alphabet were represented by those nine. Suppose we put down the letters of the alphabet and the other letters underneath, and see what can be made of it then."

"We don't know what language it is in."

"Probably Spanish, like the letter itself. Let us try."

She wrote down the twenty-seven letters of the Spanish alphabet, and under each the corresponding letter of the key words:--

a b c ch d e f g h i j l ll m n n o p q r s t u v x y z
J O S E P A L A F O X J O S E P A L A F O X J O S E P

"There you are, Jack. Now look. The first letter of the cipher, s, may stand for either _c_ or _m_ or _x_; we can't tell which of the three until we get a little further."

"It's a pretty puzzle," said Jack. "The next letter is E; that may be either _ch_ or _n_ or _y_, and if we put either of them after _c_, _m_, or _x_, we sha'n't begin to make any Spanish word that I know of."

"No," agreed Juanita, putting her pencil to her lips. "It looks as if the sentence can't be Spanish."

"Don Fernan wrote to me in English. Let us try that. I'll do it this time."

Jack wrote down the letters of the English alphabet, placing the key-words below as before:--

a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z
J O S E P A L A F O X J O S E P A L A F O X J O S E

"S is either _c_, _n_, or _y_ this time, and E is either _d_, _o_, or _a_. We can drop _d_ and _e_, because they can't follow any of the first three; that leaves _co_, _no_, and _yo_. This is getting interesting, Juanita."

"Yes, I am getting quite excited. Now for the next letter, O. That can stand for _b_, _j_, _m_, _u_, _x_. I'll write down all the combinations, and see how they look."

They were fifteen, as follows:--

cob nob yob
coj noj yoj
com nom yom
cou nou you
cox nox yox

"Some of these are too comical for anything," said Jack; "but we've one complete word, _you_. Let us see what the next comes to. S again; that's _c_, _n_, or _y_. Then F; that's _i_ or _t_. No English word begins with _ct_, _nt_, or _yt_, so _t_ goes out. Now for L; that's _g_ or _r_; and the combinations now are:--

cig nig yig
cir nir yir

I say, your father wouldn't begin by addressing me as 'you nigger', would he? The next letter is S; _c_, _n_, or _y_ again. Not a single one of them helps to make a word. We are on the wrong track, Juanita."

"Perhaps the first word is not _you_ at all."

"Well, let's go back and see how many of the fifteen combinations of the first three letters will fit on to the fourth. It's quite clear that you can't make a word by putting c or y after any of them; there's only n left, and all we can make is _coun_ and _noun_. Don Fernan wouldn't go in for grammar, would he? If we drop _noun_ we've only coun, and that looks most unlikely."

"Be quick with the next letter, Jack. Why do you talk so much? I could jump with excitement."

"Don't be in a hurry; perhaps the whole thing will come to grief again. The next letter is F; that stands for _i_ or _t_; _i_ won't do, but _t_ will, and we get _count_; that's a word at any rate. I wonder what we're to count. Now for L; that's _g_ or _r_; and S again; that's _c_, _n_, or _y_. And unless I'm a Dutchman, that makes the word _country_."

Juanita clapped her hands and laughed.

"You _are_ getting clever!" she said.

The irony escaped Jack, who was busy working out the next word. In a few minutes he had made out _house_.

"Country house!" exclaimed Juanita. "Oh, you are slow, Jack; do be quick! What about the country house?"

But the same process had to be gone through with every letter, and it was quite half an hour before the whole message was deciphered. The excitement of Juanita and himself increased with every fresh discovery, and when the task was finished, and the simple English words were written down, each gave a gasp of relief. The message consisted of but six words:--

_Country house old well twelve feet_.

"I see it! I see it all!" exclaimed Juanita. "Oh, Jack, we shall get it after all! I don't care for the treasure itself one bit really, not one bit; but I could dance with joy at defeating that wretch Miguel, and I should like to have some money to give to the poor people ruined in Saragossa. You must go, Jack. The well is in the garden behind the house, near the wall. It has not been used for many years; we got water from a new well by the kitchen. Only to think that all is coming right after all!"

"Yes," said Jack; "Pepito and I will go to-morrow. How deep is the well, Juanita?"

"I don't know. It doesn't matter. Twelve feet means something. You will find out what, Jack. And then--"

"Then, Juanita, for England!"

*CHAPTER XXXIV*

*Dead Men Tell no Tales*

The Old Well--A Voice--Visions--Infimis

"It is locked, Senor."

Pepito had dismounted at the gate of the Casa Alvarez on the hillside.

"Shout, Pepito," replied Jack from the saddle of his mule. "Perhaps the old man will hear us from the house."

The gipsy put his hands to his mouth, and called shrilly. There was no answer, no sound save the hum of bees and the song of birds.

"We must climb the wall, then," said Jack, springing to the ground.

"See, Senor, a face in the bush!" cried Pepito, pointing through the iron railings into the garden.

Looking, Jack saw, framed in the foliage of a dense laurel, the face of the old gardener.

"Adelante, hombre!" he said.

Instantly the face vanished. Jack called again; no voice answered, no footstep was heard. The two riders tied their steeds to trees in the plantation on the right, then scaled the wall and hastened towards the house.

Nearly two months had elapsed since Jack's night adventure. He was struck by the alteration in the place. It had looked untidy, ill-cared-for, then; it was now a wilderness. Flowers and shrubs bloomed in unchecked luxuriance; hollyhocks drooped their heavy heads, sprays of woodbine twined in and out among the laurels, unpruned vines crept over the weedy paths, the sweltering air was sickly with mingled perfumes. The house stood white and brown in the glowing sunlight; lush creepers almost hid the door; the dry wood-work was blistered, the lattices falling away; all was decay, silence, and desolation.

It was high noon of a sultry summer day, yet Jack shivered. He rapped at the door. There was no response save an echo. He walked round the house; every window was shuttered, every door barred. He went on down the garden at the back, following the directions given him by Juanita, and Pepito crept along behind him, his big eyes wide with awe. A vulture flew up in front, and clattered away on creaking wings. He stepped from the path, and pushed his way through tangled shrubs and matted undergrowth towards a broad chestnut in the angle of the wall. Tendrils of convolvulus clung around his feet, the scent of thyme came in gusts with the cloying odour of gardenias. Suddenly the rank vegetation ceased, and before him, in a clear space, he saw the circular covering of the old well.

Frame and winch had been removed. A broken moss-grown bucket lay hard by; near it was a long bar of wood. Around the well was a broad patch of soft black earth. As Jack approached to remove the wooden cover from the well-mouth, Pepito touched him on the arm.

"Marks, Senor!" he said under his breath; "footsteps, and marks of a mule's hoofs; fresh, Senor; made to-day."

Jack started. A green lizard, sunning itself at the edge of the well, disappeared in a flash. He saw the hoof-marks in the soil; his heart sank with a sudden misgiving. The well-cover seemed to have been clumsily replaced.

"Help me lift it," said Jack.

They removed the heavy cover. The well opened black before them. Pepito peered over the edge; he saw nothing; there was neither rope nor ladder.

"How can we get down?" said Jack.

Looking around, he saw what appeared to be the end of a ladder projecting from beneath a bush. He dragged it out; a snake dropped from it and vanished in the grass; it was a ladder some sixteen feet long.

"It will not reach the bottom of the well," said Jack. His eye caught the bar of wood.

"Bring me that, Pepito."

He laid it across the well-mouth; on its mossy side there was a dull splash of red. The bar stretched across the opening. Lifting it again, Jack gave it to Pepito, and, taking the ladder, lowered this into the well till only the topmost rungs were above the brickwork.

"Put the wood through," he said.

Thus the ladder hung dangling on its support, fifteen feet into the well. Pepito looked at his master enquiringly.

"Yes, you are to climb down. Stay!" he added, as the boy prepared to step down on to the swinging ladder.

He took some papers from his pocket, twisted them into a loose mass, and wound about them the end of a long vine tendril. Then he kindled them from his tinder-box, and let the flaming mass down quickly into the well. It burned until it was consumed.

"There is air enough. Go down, Pepito."

He steadied the ladder as the boy descended step by step. Jack counted twelve rungs, then ordered the boy to stop.

"Do you see anything, Pepito?"

A few moments passed. The gipsy's eyes were adjusting themselves to the gloom.

"A hole, Senor, a big hole in the wall."

"Can you get into it?"

"No, Senor, it is on the other side, too far away."

Bidding the boy ascend, Jack shifted the ladder across the bar. Pepito went down again, and soon Jack heard his muffled voice exclaim that he was in the hole.

"Do you find anything there? Search thoroughly."

A minute passed. Jack was crouched at the brink, holding the joists of the ladder firmly with both hands.

"There is nothing, Senor; all emptiness."

"Come up again."

He stepped out on to the brickwork, and Jack rose to his feet.

"Dead! dead! dead!" said a quavering voice behind him.

He turned with a nervous start. While he had been engaged at the well, a figure had been slowly approaching from a thicket of laurel, furtively, with hesitation, stopping for a moment, then taking another unsteady step and stopping again. Jack recognized the old gardener, but how altered! His limbs shook as with a palsy; his lips mumbled without sound; his eyes were wild.

"What is it, hombre?" said Jack quietly without moving.

The old man stood as if listening. Then, raising his shaking right hand, the long fingers working convulsively, he murmured:

"I saw it! ... Dead!"

Then he smiled, a thin wan smile, and tottering forward pointed waveringly to the well. Jack recoiled. The old man's smile was more awful than a sob of agony.

"They came through the gate;" he pointed across the garden to the farther wall. "There were two; I was hidden in the copse; I watched them. I watched them. They brought a mule; it was a fine mule, with gay trappings,--a fine mule..." The old man passed his hand across his brow. "What was I saying? I have forgotten."

"They brought a mule," said Jack.

"Yes, they brought a mule. They led it across the garden, trampling down the poor flowers--my flowers! I saw them! There were two. One was in front--the cursed afrancesado; I knew him; yes, did I not serve him at my master's table? the afrancesado! He was in front; behind him a man, a long thin man, a one-eyed man, with the mule. They crushed the flowers--my flowers ... what was I saying?"

"They came across the garden," said Jack.

"They came across the garden. They came here, here! where we are standing. The man, the one-eyed man, fastened the mule to yonder tree; then they stooped down and lifted the cover. It was heavy...I watched them. They peered down into the well, into the deep well, but they could see nothing. Then the tall man, the man with the one eye, went away; the other, the afrancesado, the cursed afrancesado, waited, and while he waited he cast pebbles into the well ... horrible! horrible!" He covered his eyes with his hand, as if to shut out some dreadful thing. "What was I saying?"

"The tall man came back," said Jack.

"The tall man came back; he brought a ladder; he fetched a beam, that beam, and they let down the ladder into the well, the deep well ... I watched them. 'Twelve steps,' said the afrancesado, the cursed afrancesado, and the tall man, the man with the one eye, went down ... Twelve steps! ... The other, the afrancesado, bent over; there was a noise below; the afrancesado said 'Bien!'--I heard him. Then the man, the long man, the man with the one eye, came up, slowly; there was a box, a heavy box; the other took it, and the man, the one-eyed man, went down, ... twelve steps ... He came up again; there was another box, a small box. I knew it; it was the master's. Then he went down again, ... twelve steps, ... and the other, the afrancesado, the accursed afrancesado, drew his knife, silently; it flashed in the sun; I watched him..." The old man stared fixedly before him. "What was I saying?" he whispered.

"He drew his knife," said Jack.

"He drew his knife," said the old man, still in a whisper. "The other, the long man, the man with one eye, came slowly, slowly, up. He stretched his left hand for the box, he raised the arm with the knife. He was behind him. He leant forward; I saw him--him, and the long man, the man with one eye--he drove it between his shoulders..."

The old man made as if to brush a cobweb from before his eyes.

"Horrible! horrible! ... down! down! down! ... What was I saying?"

*CHAPTER XXXV*

*Doom*

Outcast--Spectres--Conscience--Tracked--Vanity--Scylla-- Charybdis--Jose--Faithful unto Death

Within a few miles of Calatayud, a narrow path, little more than a foot-track, leads down from the hills on to the highroad to Saragossa. Just before joining the highway, the path winds between two low bluffs that screen it from the sight of wayfarers below. Indeed, any muleteer or arriero unacquainted with the country might almost pass unawares the spot where road and hill-path meet, so completely is it hidden by the ash-gray contours of the hills.

About the time when Jack dismounted at the gate of the Casa Alvarez, a man was making his way downward along this narrow track, urging a heavily-laden mule with low cries to hasten its flagging pace. He was a young man, in the costume of a muleteer; his cheeks were pale and sunken, his eyes unnaturally bright. Every now and again he would throw an anxious backward glance over his shoulder, not consciously, as if he feared pursuit, but as though in obedience to some impulse of which he was hardly aware.

When he approached the point where the track joined the road he stepped to the mule's head and brought the animal to a stand-still, looking from left to right as if in doubt. After a moment's hesitation he tied the mule to one of the rare saplings that grew at the side of the track, and advanced warily towards the highway, pausing at short intervals, and bending his head forward to listen. There was no sound save the silver trill of a lark far above, and the soughing of a light breeze as it lapped the edges of the hills. The man moved forward again, still more cautiously; rounding a knoll, he came to the road, that stretched in gentle undulations for several hundreds of yards in a straight line east and west. No one was in sight. The man gave a sigh of relief, followed by one of those quick uneasy backward glances that seemed to be habitual with him. Rapidly scanning the road once more, he returned to the mule, released the bridle from the tree, and slowly led the laden animal down the path.

He was within a dozen paces of the dusty highway when he halted suddenly, dragging heavily upon the reins. His dusky, olive-hued features paled, the hand that grasped the bridle trembled nervously; his whole attitude was one of dire apprehension. For a moment he stood intently listening, his eyes fixed in a wide stare; then, wheeling the mule sharply round and prodding the weary beast desperately with the knife he drew from his belt, he raced back along the track. For a full quarter of a mile he continued his upward course; then he stopped, and again turned his head towards the road in the attitude of listening. At first he could hear nothing but the throbbing of his heart and the quick breathing of the mule by his side; but gradually the clatter of many hoofs on the hard road became more and more audible through the clear air, though the horsemen were hidden from view by the obstructing hills. They arrived at what he judged to be the place he had just left. He heard "Halt!" in a rough stentorian tone. The voice was Spanish, and its effect on the anxious listening man was as that of a galvanic shock. With a smothered cry he dashed forward, dragging the unwilling mule, which he goaded with alternate stabs of the knife and whispered words half of menace half of entreaty.

There was no halting now. For mile after mile they continued their flight, until, when both mule and man were exhausted, they at length stopped at the edge of a wild gorge high up in the mountains. There, for the first time since he fled the voice, the man looked carefully around. The place was evidently new to him. In his flight he had diverged at the first opportunity from the track, along which he had come, not then alone, earlier in the day. The new path was more difficult than the old; it wound away from his obvious destination; it led, indeed, almost due north into the heart of the mountain country--the Sierra de Moncayo, the precipitous granite range where King AEolus had his mythic throne. But the fugitive knew not, cared not, whither he went, so long as it was away from the voice of his countrymen. And he avoided, with the shrinking of dread, the track he knew.

One thing was remarkable during his late impetuous flight. He seemed to have forgotten his strange trick of glancing backward over his shoulder. Many times he turned half round to see if he was followed, but consciously, less abjectly, for all his panic fear.

When he had rested for a few minutes, he rose and carefully scanned the surrounding country, debating with himself what course to follow. His view was circumscribed by the irregular masses of bare rock and sparsely wooded slopes that formed the horizon. But he appeared at last to have made up his mind, for, pulling the mule slowly round on the narrow track, he took a few steps as if to return in the direction from which he had come. But his bearing was timid, uncertain, vacillating, and when a mountain eagle swept from its eyry, and screamed just above his head, he started as if struck, hauled his poor beast feverishly across the track, and once more pressed in hot haste towards the north.

For some time he marched on rapidly. Then the fatigue of travelling over the steep uneven track again made itself felt; his pace slackened; he moved along behind the mule as if mechanically, while mechanically he still urged it forward with his knife. For minutes at a stretch he seemed as in a dream, immersed in dark thought. Again he glanced fearfully backward, not as though seeking a visible object of menace, not at the frowning hills, but with eyes that attempted to pierce the infinite for a something beyond. At moments he started from his waking nightmare to a full consciousness of his position among these bleak inhospitable hills. The phantoms dogging his thoughts then vanished, giving place to real cares--physical pain, a sense of desolation. At such times he searched anxiously for a path to the west, whereby making a circuit he might reach his goal, avoiding the highroad, where he had so narrowly escaped the hands of his countrymen the guerrilleros. But the track wound on, swerving sometimes to right or left, yet leading remorselessly northward, no by-path branching towards Calatayud. He dared not turn back. The danger of the road, had he known it, was past; but the awful risk of capture made him sick with fear. He plodded on, sunk more and more in dark imaginings, until at last, when the red sun was sinking below the distant purple peaks on his left, the mule suddenly stopped, and, breathing heavily, dropped upon its knees. The poor brute was spent. The man awoke with a start from his reverie. He was on the edge of a deep gully; giant rocks hemmed him in on either side; the path--there was no path! For the first time he realized that the granite hills held him in their grip.

He looked at the mule, that lay with lolling tongue and starting eyes. The animal was famished. He had no food for it, none for himself; only now was he conscious of his own gnawing hunger. He loosened the girths, and, removing the heavy panniers from the mule's back, enabled it to rise. There was nothing to tie it to. Sinking down on a flat rock, he held the bridle and peered into the deepening gloom. He dared not move forward; one careless step in this wild place might hurl them both into an abyss. There he sat, and the darkness gathered, and the chill of night wrapped him round.

What were his thoughts as he waited and endured? Who shall say? Human justice may falter, may be long upon the road; Eternal Justice is instant, relentless, inevitable. The sense of doom was upon this man, as he held sombre vigil with the cold accusing stars.

It was an unkempt, haggard, agued figure that rose stiffly and dizzily from his hard couch as soon as the pale dawn came creeping through the narrow gully among the hills. He could just see the mule standing motionless a few yards away. He shuddered as his eye fell upon the brass-clamped coffers at its feet. Then he moved as if to pass away, leaving behind him both mule and treasure, the visible links that bound him to the past. But after a few staggering steps he hesitated, set his teeth in desperate resolve, and returning, painfully lifted the boxes on to the panniers, the mule standing with drooped ears, and shivering in the raw air. In the half-light he led the famished beast away from the ravine, searching the rocky ground narrowly for marks of its track. Here and there appeared a stone covered with gray lichen; at these the mule halted and licked a scanty, bitter meal. At one point a silver rivulet poured from a fissure and fell clattering upon the rocks far down the steep. There Miguel dropped to his knees and drank with the animal, then went on again.

It was nearly two hours before he saw, on the far side of a deep ravine, a foot-path winding about a wall of rock. Was it the path he had left? He did not know. Only the guerrilleros he feared to meet could have told him that but one other path led across these barren heights. Leading the mule cautiously down one face of the ravine, he hauled it with infinite difficulty up the other. The poor beast, faint with hunger, had scarcely strength to crawl when at last it scrambled with its burden on to the track. But for the constant goad it would have fallen by the way. The path ran north and south; Miguel hesitated which direction to take. Northward he would have to scale steeper heights, but would increase his distance from the garden of his fear; southward, he might reach Calatayud and safety with the French, but who knew what danger might lie between? As the question beat this way and that in his tortured brain, his eyes lit upon a long, thin, jagged rock in which, in the gloom of the preceding evening, he had marked with a shudder a grotesque resemblance to a human form he would have given worlds to forget. Then he knew that he was upon the track from which he had wandered; he would persevere in the attempt to find a cross-path to the west. Surely there must be one that would lead, by however long a circuit, to his goal?

He turned wearily towards the north and instinctively glanced back across the hills, now variously tinted by the ascending sun. As he did so his eyes dilated, and for some moments he stood as if rooted to the ground. In the clear distance two figures mounted on mules were coming towards him. Even while he looked he saw one, the smaller of the two, pointing in his direction. The other drew rein for an instant, then both urged their mules to a trot. A bend in the path hid them from view, and Miguel leapt round, knowing that he was in very truth a hunted man. For nearly a day he had been pursued by the phantom of his crime. He had run from the shadow of a sound, fled from the perils his own imagination had created. Terror of he knew not what had left him all unstrung. But now that vengeance dogged him in real bodily form his mind braced itself to meet it. Only for a moment did his heart quail with misgiving; he reeled slightly, and clutched at the mule's bridle for support; then, recovering himself instantly, he struck the jaded beast, and with a fierce cry drove it before him up the path.

Suddenly the track bent eastward, it ceased to rise, he seemed to be on the northern slope of the watershed up which he had toiled during the previous day. He topped the crest. The path stretched downwards before him; and, scattering the loose stones to right and left, Miguel raced on with the mule until at a turn in the track a vast and brilliant panorama opened before his yearning eyes. Below him, at the edge of the long slope, stretched a rolling wooded country intersected by numerous watercourses shining in the morning sun. Far away on the horizon a silver streak wound and doubled on itself. It must be the river Ebro. Could he but gain the rich champaign below, he hoped that, for a time at least, he would be safe. In some copse or covert, vineyard or olive-ground, even in the byways of some hamlet, he might find a temporary refuge. But with the thought itself its utter hopelessness was borne in upon him. His pursuers must be closing in fast, although the windings of the track hid them from him when at intervals he turned to see. Panting himself, he dragged his panting beast with reckless haste, though in his inmost consciousness sure that the road was too long, the time too short. One solitary hope remained to him. If he left the mule with its retarding load, abandoned the prize for which he had staked his all, he might perhaps even yet find some rocky defile, some favouring grove, wherein to hide and baffle pursuit. But no, the renunciation was too great for his blighted soul. For the treasure he had schemed and sinned; he could not, dared not, let it go.

Scrambling on down the mountain track, he spied at length, some hundreds of feet below him, a narrow hillroad to which his headlong course must lead him by and by. Its farther side bordered a ravine. The road seemed near at hand, but as he continued his flight he found that the downward track zigzagged on the face of the slope, so that sometimes two or three of its coils lay immediately beneath him. There was no shorter way. Approaching the end of the last of these windings, he was warned by the clatter of dislodged stones that his pursuers were now hard upon his heels. He threw a quick glance upward; there, two hundred feet above him, the riders crossed his sight, following at headlong speed the first winding of the track. Without pause he raced staggeringly along.

All unknowing, he had himself been watched for some time from below. At the edge of the hill-road, hidden from him by a jutting mass of rock, a man was resting, seated on a boulder, eating a frugal meal from a wallet hung at his neck. He was a gaunt, hollow-eyed man, with wasted cheeks; thin, unkempt locks straggled from beneath his cap; his long tangled beard was snowy white. His attitude was of one in pain. At first he watched the impetuous muleteer dully, without attention; then he started, paused in lifting a piece of bread, and stared long with quickening breath. As the mule turned the last of the zigzags a sunbeam flashed on the brass of one of the boxes. The seated man rose; his eyes, opened to their fullest width, now fixed themselves with a glare of the intensest hatred upon the fugitive approaching, until once more he was hidden from sight.

Then with the stealthy movement of a cat the worn, panting wayfarer glided from the brink of the ravine to the opposite side of the road, and crouched down under cover of the rocks that had hidden him from the man above. Almost ceasing to breathe, he drew his knife, and waited. His movements suggested that he expected the muleteer to emerge into the road between himself and the animal. But not thus was the event ordered. Rounding the last turn of the path, Miguel, to avoid a projecting rock, had changed sides; thus when, after a few seconds, he reached the junction of path and road, the mule was between him and the man who lay there waiting, ready to strike. The anticipated moment was come. But Miguel was snatched from human vengeance; for him was reserved another fate. With an inarticulate cry of baffled rage the ambuscader sprang forward as if to overtake the mule, but, under the impetus gained during the last few yards of the hill-path, the beast was still moving quickly in an oblique direction across the road. Miguel at one and the same moment heard the cry and saw the flash of the knife. Till then he was unaware of his enemy's presence, so absorbed was his attention with the path ahead and the progress of the pursuers behind. At the cry he gave a startled side-long glance at the wild menacing features glaring at him across the mule's neck. In that dark look he read his doom.

It fell more quickly than any of the four persons--the actors themselves, the spectators above--could have thought possible. The two riders on the steep hill-path had now come within full sight of the scene passing on the road. As they gazed, holding their breath, they saw the mule between the two men staggering across the road. Startled by the sudden flash of the uplifted blade, the poor beast swerved towards the ravine, driving Miguel, all unconscious, on to the brink. He had already slipped towards the almost perpendicular descent before he realized his peril; then he clutched wildly at the slackened bridle, dragging the mule after him. It stumbled at the edge; burdened with its treasure-laden panniers it could not recover its footing, and in a moment man and beast, with one mingled scream of terror, disappeared into the yawning gulf.

The spectators above had halted, transfixed by the appalling tragedy. Then they hastened downward impetuously. The older man had fallen forward on the very edge of the ravine. Jack feared that he would follow Miguel Priego to destruction. But when, reaching the road, he threw himself from his mule and stooped to the prone figure, he found that the man had fainted, overcome by his fierce passion and the agitation of the last tense moments. Then for the first time Jack was aware of the thunderous roar of a torrent, and looking into the ravine he saw a white flood swirling over the rocks hundreds of feet below.

"Pepito," he said in a strained voice, "clamber down carefully. See what has become of Don Miguel--if anything can be done for him."

While the boy was gone on his perilous errand Jack loosened the clothing of the prostrate man, fetched water from a mountain-rill, and bathed his head. He opened his eyes, but there was no speculation in them. They wandered vacantly and closed again. Jack looked at him pityingly, and, as he looked, felt vaguely that the worn features were familiar to him. They reminded him of someone he had known as a child in Barcelona, a man who had mended his toys for him, and carried him on his back when tired; who had petted him and scolded him by turns, and whom he had alternately plagued and domineered over. Was it Jose Pinzon? Jack could scarcely believe it. The Jose he had known was a man touching his prime, strong, stalwart, bright-eyed, raven-haired; the man lying before him was bent and aged, wasted, hoary, decrepit. Yet the likeness to the old Jose was remarkable. Was it possible that the faithful servant had not been killed in Galindo's sortie, as Juanita had believed?

It was three-quarters of an hour before Pepito returned from his descent of the precipice. Nothing living could have survived so terrible a fall; Miguel must instantaneously have gone to his account. Fragments of the boxes, but for which the mule might have regained its footing, lay scattered on the rocks, and out of the ruin Pepito had recovered but one relic--one gold pendant,--which he handed to his master; all else had been swept away by the torrent. Then he helped him lift the poor wayfarer to the back of his mule, and together they bore him to a muleteer's cabin in the hills.

For three days the man lingered there, unconscious for the most part, and in intervals of consciousness talking at random of people and things that were quite strange to his hearers. Jack nursed him with every care; but it was evident from the first that his days were numbered. On the third evening, when the sun was near setting and the cicalas had commenced their chant, the man opened his eyes wide and looked amazedly about him. He made an effort to rise, but fell back upon the rough blanket that formed his bed. He seemed to be listening. Jack, watching him, saw for the first time a glimmer of intelligence in his eyes. Through the open door came the sound of hoofs rapidly approaching. There was a strange eagerness in the man's upward gaze. The sound ceased; Pepito came into the hut, followed by a young lady and a priest fetched in hot haste from Carinena. The former bent over the bed and looked hard at the pallid face; the latter fell on his knees and began to recite the prayers for the dying.

"Jose! Jose!" whispered Juanita; "you know me, my dear friend?"

"My mistress!" he murmured faintly.

She clasped his hand; a look of glad content shone for a brief moment in the sick man's eyes. There was a silence; then, as the light faded, came the solemn voice of Padre Consolacion:

"Domine, in manus tuas animam suam commendamus!"

*CHAPTER XXXVI*

*Sergeant Wilkes wants to know*

Mr. Lumsden and Me--Me and Mr. Lumsden--A Lady in the Case--The Pleasure of your Company--O'Hare and the Ladies--The Grampus takes Cover--The Eve of Parting--The Age Limit--Poor Mr. Dugdale!--The Question

"Want to know about the fight at Corunna, do you? Hanged if you ain't always wanting to know something. Well, attention! dress by the right! and stand easy while I endeavour to reconstruct the situation."

The scene was the quay at Lisbon; the speaker was Sergeant Wilkes; the audience was a knot of green-coated recruits who, to judge by their docility, regarded the sergeant with admiration and awe. Since he had won the three stripes Wilkes had lost nothing of his loquacity, and had, indeed, cultivated a vocabulary of words long enough to match his new importance.

"Here you are, then; that there stands for the formidable French battery at the summit of the eminence"--he placed a jack-knife on the wall before him,--"this here stands for General Disney's brigade"--he put a plug of black tobacco at a distance from the knife,--"this here stands for the Reserve of that exemplary and notorious general Ted Paget"--he ranged two pebbles to the right of the tobacco,--"and this here," taking up one of the pebbles, "is Captain O'Hare's company. Look at him well, 'cos 'twas Captain O'Hare's company, and me in it, that won the battle on that most fatal and obstrepolous day. We was a-going up the hill towards that there battery, when blowed if we didn't get variegated with a lot of French dragoons in among the farmyards. Then up comes Mr. Lumsden, and says to me, 'Corp'ril Wilkes,' he says--I was only a corp'ril then, you understand--'Corp'ril Wilkes,' he says, 'we've got to shove down that there wall and drive the mounseers out. You an' me can do it if we puts our backs into it,' says he. 'Right you are, sir,' says I, 'we'll fustigate the mounseers and extipulate them to the last individual.' Them were the words I used. Well--"

"I say, sargint," said Corporal Bates, strolling across the road, "that's a smart little craft a-spanking up the river there. Looks like a despatch-boat, eh?"

"Don't interjeculate," said Wilkes irritably. "You always must put your spoke in. I was just telling the young 'uns how Mr. Lumsden and me won the fight at Corunna; who cares for a despatch-boat?--which it ain't, but only a common sloop."

"Go on, sargint, if you please," said one of the men.

"Well, as I was saying, Mr. Lumsden and me was just a-going to shove down the wall what was intermediate between us and the mounseers when--"

"Hold hard a bit, sargint," put in Bates; "ain't that there little chap on the boat there rather like the gipsy brat what Mr. Lumsden took up with?"

"Corp'ril Bates, if you keep on interrupting your superior orficer I shall rejuce you. Gipsy brats is neither here nor there; what the young 'uns want to know is how me and Mr. Lumsden licked the French at Corunna."

"That's him; that's Pepito!" cried Bates, heedless of Wilkes' increasing irritation. "P'r'aps he'll be able to tell us what's become of his master."

Bates sheered off, and Wilkes resumed his much-interrupted narrative. He was in the middle of a very vivid description of how Mr. Lumsden and himself fought eight Frenchmen at the wall, when he became aware of a commotion at some distance along the quay. Chagrined to find the attention of his audience wandering, he stood up, exclaiming:

"What are the rampaging Vamooses at now?--hang them!"

But he saw, not Portuguese, but a number of men in the well-known green of the 95th Rifles, marching up the street, cheering vigorously. Among them, in the middle of the causeway, strode two young Spaniards, the one slim and lissom, the other broad and bulky. Both walked buoyantly, and seemed in high good-humour. Behind them, over their heads, could be seen the antic figure of Pepito, perched on Bates's shoulders, and looking as proud as a peacock. Wilkes stared at the procession as it approached, wondering to see two Spaniards with the unprecedented escort of British Riflemen. All at once he drew himself up, struck his feet together, and, just as the head of the procession reached him, brought his hand to his eyebrow in the stiff military salute. His face was a study in its successive expressions of perplexity, vexation, and pleasure.

The recruits were taken too much aback to be able to make their salute before the procession had passed.

"Who's that ragged Don you're saluting, sargint?" asked one of them.

"Who's that, you dough-faced clod-hopping chaw-bacon, you!" cried Wilkes, seizing the opportunity of venting his feelings. "Why, that's Lieutenant Jack Lumsden, him what helped me to lick the mounseers at Corunna. And I'll make it warm for Charley Bates," he muttered, "stealing a march on me like that. Why didn't I perpetrate the disguise? That's what I want to know."

Meanwhile Jack and the Grampus had continued their progress until they arrived at the head-quarters of the 95th. There, two or three subalterns were seated at an open window, to catch a breath of air from the sea, grateful on that hot June day.

"Hullo!" said Pomeroy, catching sight of the procession, "what are the rascals up to now?"

"Some mischief, you may be sure," said Smith, looking over his shoulder. "I shall be glad when we get marching orders to join Sir Arthur. The men will get horribly loose if we're here long."

"By George!" said Pomeroy, "they appear to have got two Spaniards among them. Why--what--look here, Shirley, isn't that Lumsden's boy Pepito grinning like a monkey on Bates's shoulder?"

"Eh! What? Where?" said Smith, pushing his head out. "Jehoshaphat! That fat Spaniard--ha! ha!--don't you see, you fellows?--ha! ha!--he's the Grampus, bigger than ever. Gad! I shall die of this! The Grampus in Spanish toggery!"

"And the other fellow's Jack himself!" shouted Pomeroy excitedly. "Hurray! hurray!"

"'Sound the trumpets, beat the drums!'" quoted Shirley. "Hurray! Three cheers for Lumsden! But what am I to do with my epitaph?"

"What's all this pandemonium about?" cried a loud voice from the door of the room. "I wish you gentlemen would behave less like a pack of schoolb--"

"Lumsden's back, sir," said Smith. "The men are escorting him up the street."

"Good gad!" ejaculated Colonel Beckwith. Then, without more ado, he caught up Smith's cap from the table, stuck it on his head, and ran downstairs buttoning up his jacket on the way. He reached the door just in time to meet Jack before he entered.

"'Pon my honour--how d'e do?--glad to see you, hang it! You're not dead, then, after all?"

"Not a bit, sir," said Jack, heartily returning his handgrip. "Come to report myself, sir."

"Good gad! What a--what a villainous brigand you look! But we'll soon put that right. 'Pon my honour, I am deuced glad to see you."