umblers that she used to feed
from her balcony. She loved to see them from her window circling,
wheeling, and as it were, play-acting in the air. For the rest, the
commonest kinds that laid the most eggs, brought up the largest broods,
and took on the plumpest breasts when fed with ground maize and Indian
corn, green from the patch which he grew on purpose for her behind the
willows--these were his wife's especial delight.

Ramon opened the little wicket to which she had so often run to meet
him, under the three great fig trees. The gate creaked on unaccustomed
hinges. The white square of a placard on the post caught his eye. It
was too dark to see clearly, or else El Sarria would have seen that it
was a bill of sale of the house and effects of a certain Ramon Garcia,
outlaw. As he stepped within his foot slipped among the rotten figs
which lay almost ankle-deep on the path he had once kept so clean. A
buzz of angry wasps arose. They were drunken, however, with the
fermenting fruit, and blundered this way and that like men tipsy with
new wine.

The path before him was tangled across and across with bindweed and
runners of untended vine. The neglected artichokes had shot, and their
glary seed-balls rose as high as his chin like gigantic thistles.

The house that had been so full of light and loving welcome lay all dark
before him, blank and unlovely as a funeral vault.

Yet for all these signs of desolation Ramon only reproached himself the
more.

"The little Dolores," he thought, "she has felt herself forsaken. Like a
wounded doe she shrinks from sight. Doubtless she comes and goes by the
back of the house. The sweet little Dolores----" And he smiled. It did
not occur to him that she would ever be turned out of the house that was
his and hers. She would go on living there and waiting for him. And now
how surprised she would be. But he would tell her all, and she would
forgive him. And it is typical of the man and of his nation that he
never for a moment dreamed that his being "El Sarria," a penniless
outlaw with a price on his head, would make one whit of difference to
Dolores.

After all what was it to be outlawed? If he did this service for the
Abbot and Don Carlos--a hard one, surely--he would be received into the
army of Navarra, and he might at once become an officer. Or he might
escape across the seas and make a home for Dolores in a new country.
Meantime he would see her once more, for that night at least