Sarrion.

The Plaza de la Constitucion is the centre of the town, and beneath its
colonnade are the offices of the countless diligences that connect the
smaller towns of Navarre with the capital, which continued to run even in
time of war to such places as Irun, Jaca, and even Estella, where the
Carlist cause is openly espoused. Marcos made the round of the diligence
offices. He had, it seemed, a hundred friends among the thick-set
muleteers in breeches, stockings, and spotless shirt, who looked at him
with keen, dust-laden eyes from beneath the shade of their great berets.
The drivers of the diligences, which were now arriving from the mountain
villages, paused in their work of unloading their vehicles to give him
the latest news.

They were soft spoken persons with a repressed manner, which
characterises both men and women of their ancient race, and they spoke to
him in Basque. Some freed their hands from the folds of the long blanket,
which each wore according to his fancy, to shake hands with him; others
nodded curtly. Men from the valley of Ebro muttered "Buenas"--the curt
salutation of Aragon the taciturn.

Marcos seemed to know them by their baptismal names. He even knew their
horses by name also, and asked after each, while Perro, affable alike
with rich and poor, exchanged the time of day with traveled dogs, all
lean and dusty from the road, who limped on sore feet and probably told
him of the snow while they lay in the sun and licked their paws. Like his
master, he was not proud, but took a wide view of life, so that all
varieties of it came within his field of vision.

Then master and dog took a walk down the Calle del Pozo Blanco, where the
saddle and harness-makers congregate; where muleteers must come to buy
those gay saddle-bags which so soon lose their bright colour in the
glaring sun; where the guardias civiles step in to buy their paste and
pipe-clay; where the great man's groom may chat with the teamster from
the mountain while both are waiting on the saddler's needle.

Finally Marcos passed through the wide Calle de San Ignacio to the
drawbridges across the double fosse, where the rope-makers are always at
work, walking backwards with an ever decreasing bundle of hemp at their
waists and one eye cocked upwards towards the roadway so that they know
all who come and go better even than the sentry at the gate. For the
sentries are changed three or four times a day, while the rope-maker goes
on fore