dred rumours and lies innumerable, were on the roads also,
traveling hither and thither over Spain. And Marshall Prim seemed to be
the favoured god of the moment.

Marcos was at his post outside the convent school wall at seven o'clock.
He heard the clock of San Fernando strike eight. In these Southern
latitudes the evenings are not much longer in summer than in winter. It
was quite dark by eight o'clock when Marcos rode away. He was not given
to a display of emotion. He was an eminently practical man. Juanita would
have come if she could, he reflected. Why could she not keep her
appointment?

He rode to the main gate and asked if he could see Sor Teresa--known in
the world as Dolores Sarrion--for the monastic life was forbidden by law
at this time in Spain, and this was no nunnery; though, as in all such
places, certain mediaeval follies were carefully fostered.

"Sor Teresa is not here," was the reply through the grating.

"Then where is she?"

But there was no reply to this plain question.

"Has she gone to Pampeluna?"

The little shutter behind the grating was softly closed. And Marcos
turned his horse's head with a quiet smile. His face, beneath the shadow
of his wide hat, was still and hard. He had ridden sixty miles since
morning, but he sat upright in his saddle. This was a man, as Juanita had
observed, not to say things, but to do them.

It was not difficult for him to find out during the next few weeks that
Juanita had been sent to Pampeluna, whither also Sor Teresa had been
commanded to go. Saragossa has a playful way of sacking religious houses,
which the older-world city of Navarre would never permit. In Pampeluna
the religious habit is still respected, and a friar may carry his shaven
head high in the windy streets.

Pampeluna, it was known, might at any moment be in danger of attack, but
not of bombardment by the Carlists, who had many friends within the
walls. Juanita was as safe perhaps in Pampeluna as anywhere in Northern
Spain. So Marcos went back to Torre Garda and held his valley in a quiet
grip. The harvests were gathered in, and starvation during the coming
winter was, at all events, avoided.

The first snow came and still Marcos had no news of Juanita. He knew,
however, that both she and Sor Teresa were still at Pampeluna in the
great yellow house in the Calle de la Dormitaleria, nearly opposite the
Cathedral gate, from whence there is constant noiseless traffic of
sisters and novices