my hair tries to stand up
on my head? and all for that Carlos, let God and the devil each guard his
own, for that Majesty as they call him, but after all a man like another
and--no friend."

"Yes, why?" I murmured, feeling my body nestled at ease in the sand.

It was very dark under the overhanging rock on that night of clouds and
of wind that died and rose and died again. Dominic's voice was heard
speaking low between the short gusts.

"Friend of the Senora, eh?"

"That's what the world says, Dominic."

"Half of what the world says are lies," he pronounced dogmatically. "For
all his majesty he may be a good enough man. Yet he is only a king in
the mountains and to-morrow he may be no more than you. Still a woman
like that--one, somehow, would grudge her to a better king. She ought to
be set up on a high pillar for people that walk on the ground to raise
their eyes up to. But you are otherwise, you gentlemen. You, for
instance, Monsieur, you wouldn't want to see her set up on a pillar."

"That sort of thing, Dominic," I said, "that sort of thing, you
understand me, ought to be done early."

He was silent for a time. And then his manly voice was heard in the
shadow of the rock.

"I see well enough what you mean. I spoke of the multitude, that only
raise their eyes. But for kings and suchlike that is not enough. Well,
no heart need despair; for there is not a woman that wouldn't at some
time or other get down from her pillar for no bigger bribe perhaps than
just a flower which is fresh to-day and withered to-morrow. And then,
what's the good of asking how long any woman has been up there? There is
a true saying that lips that have been kissed do not lose their
freshness."

I don't know what answer I could have made. I imagine Dominic thought
himself unanswerable. As a matter of fact, before I could speak, a voice
came to us down the face of the rock crying secretly, "Ola, down there!
All is safe ashore."

It was the boy who used to hang about the stable of a muleteer's inn in a
little shallow valley with a shallow little stream in it, and where we
had been hiding most of the day before coming down to the shore. We both
started to our feet and Dominic said, "A good boy that. You didn't hear
him either come or go above our heads. Don't reward him with more than
one peseta, Senor, whatever he does. If you were to give him two he
would go mad at the sight of so much wealth and throw up his job