Something in the aspect of the girl-rider as she swept up parallel with
the low garden wall, her hair floating disordered about her
shoulders--her eyes black and shining like stars--the sheaf of papers
she waved in her hand, all compelled the Carlist to suspend that last
irrevocable order.

It was Concha Cabezos who arrived when the eleventh hour was long past,
and leaped from her reeking horse opposite the place of execution. With
her, wild-haired as a Maenad, rode La Giralda, cross-saddled like a man.

"General Cabrera! Where is General Cabrera?" cried Concha. "I must see
him instantly. These are no traitors. They are true men, and in the
service of Don Carlos. Here are their papers!"

"Where is Ramon Cabrera? Tell me quickly!" cried La Giralda. "I have
news for him. I was with his mother when she died. They whipped me at
the cross of Tortosa to tell what I knew--stripping me to the waist they
whipped me, being old and the mother of many. Cabrera will avenge me.
Let me but see Ramon Cabrera whom of old I suckled at my breasts!"

The officer hesitated. In such circumstances one might easily do wrong.
He might shoot these men, and after all find that they were innocent. He
preferred to wait. The living are more easily deprived of life than the
dead restored to it. Such was his thought.

In any case he had not long to wait.

Round the angle of the mill-house swept the general and his staff,
brilliant in scarlet and white, heightened by the glitter of abundant
gold-lace. For the ex-butcher of Tortosa was a kind of military dandy,
and loved to surround himself with the foppery of the _matador_ and the
brigand. At heart, indeed, he was still the _guerrillero_ of Morella,
riding home through the streets of that little rebel city after a
successful foray.

As his eyes fell on the row of men dark against the dusty _adobe_ of the
garden wall, and on the two pale women, a dark frown overspread his
face.

"What is the meaning of this?" he cried. "Why have you not obeyed your
instructions? Why are these men not yet dead?"

The officer trembled, and began an explanation, pointing to Concha and
La Giralda, both of whom stood for a moment motionless. Then flinging
herself over the low wall of the garden as if her years had more nearly
approached seventeen than seventy, La Giralda caught the great man by
the stirrup.

"Little Ramon, Ramon Cabrera," she cried, "have you forgotten your old
nurse, La Giralda of Sevilla, you