eat keen pain ran through his soul. He heard Dolores call
his name! High, keen, clear--as it were out of an eternity of pain, it
came to him. "_Ramon, Ramon--help me, Ramon!_"

He stood a moment clutching at his breast. The cry was not repeated. But
all the same, there could be no mistake. It was her voice or that of an
angel from heaven. She had summoned him, and alive or dead he would find
her. He drew his knife and with a spring was in the road. Along the wall
he sped towards the door of the dwelling-place: it stood open and the
wide hall stretched before him empty, vague, and dark.

Ramon listened, his upper lip lifted and his white teeth showing a
little. He held his knife, yet clean and razor-sharp in his hand. There
was a babel of confused sounds above; he could distinguish the tones of
Luis Fernandez. But the voice of his Dolores he did not hear again. No
matter, he had heard it once and he would go--yes, into the midst of his
foes. Escape or capture, Carlist or Cristino did not matter now. She was
innocent; she loved him; she had called his name. Neither God nor devil
should stop him now. He was already on the staircase. He went
noiselessly, for he was bare of foot, having stripped in the river-bed,
and left his brown cordovans beside his gun. But before his bare sole
touched the hollow of the second step, the one sound in the universe
which could have stopped him reached his ear--and that foot was never
set down.

_El Sarria heard the first cry of a new-born child._

CHAPTER XIII

DON TOMAS DIGS A GRAVE

No Cristino bullet that ever was moulded could have stopped the man more
completely. He stood again on the floor of the paven hall, pale, shaking
like an aspen leaf, his whole live soul upturned and aghast within him.

And above the youngling blared like a trumpet.

El Sarria was outside now. His knife was hidden in his breast. There was
no need of it, at least for the present. He looked out of the gate upon
the white and dusty highway. Like the hall, it was vague and empty,
ankle-deep too in yet warm dust, that felt grateful to his feet after
the sharp stones of the _arroyo_ out of which he had climbed.

Under the barn a woman crouched by a fire near a little tent pitched in
a corner, evidently taking care of the _tan_ in the absence of her
companions. Gipsies they were, as he could see, and strangers to the
place. Perhaps she could tell him something. She called aloud to him,
and he went an