us have a king!"

Prim was better. He was a man at all events, and not a word-spinner. He
was from Cataluna, where they make hard men with clear heads. And he knew
his own mind. And he also said: "Let us have a king."

One cried for Don Carlos, and another for Espartero. Cataluna said there
was no living with Andalusia. Aragon wanted her own king and wished
Valencia would go hang. Navarre was all for Don Carlos.

And when Marcos de Sarrion rode into Saragossa they were calling in the
streets that only a republic was possible now.

He went home to that grim palace between the Cathedral and the Ebro and
found his father gone. A brief note told him that Sarrion had gone to
Madrid where a meeting of notables had been hastily summoned--and that
he, Marcos, must hurry back to Torre Garda--that the Carlists were up for
their king.

Marcos returned the same night to Pampeluna, and the next day rode to
Torre Garda by the high road that winds up the valley of the Wolf. In his
own small kingdom be soon made his iron hand felt. And these people who
would pay no taxes to king or regent remained quiet amid the anarchy that
reigned all over Spain.

Thus a week passed and rumours of strange doings at Madrid reached the
quiet valley. All over the country, bands of malcontents calling
themselves Carlists had risen in obedience to the voice of Don Carlos'
grandson, the son of that Don Juan who had renounced a hopeless cause. To
meet a soldier with his cap worn right side foremost was for the time
unusual in the cities of the north. For the army no longer knew a master;
and the Spanish soldier has a naive and simple way of notifying this
condition by wearing the peak of his cap behind.

Marcos heard nothing of his father at Madrid, but surmised that there the
talkers still held sway. The postal service of Spain is still almost
mediaeval. In the principal cities the post-offices are to-day only
opened for business during two hours of the twenty-four. In the year of
the Franco-Prussian war there was no postal service at all to the
disaffected parts of the northern provinces.

At the end of a week, Marcos rose at three o'clock and rode sixty miles
before sunset to keep his word with Juanita. He did not trust the
railway, which indeed was in constant danger of being cut by Carlist or
Royalist, but performed the distance by road where he met many friends
from Navarre and one or two from the valley of the Wolf. A thousand
reports, a hun