er he heard the rumour that the Carlists had torn up the line
between Pampeluna and Castejon.

"Go to the station," this informant added. "They will tell you there,
because you are a rich man. To me they will tell nothing."

At the station he learnt that this rumour was true; and one who was in
the telegraph service gave him to understand that the Carlists had driven
the outpost back from the mouth of the Valley of the Wolf, which was now
cut off.

"He thinks I am at Torre Garda," reflected Marcos, as he returned to the
city, fighting the wind on the bridge.

Chance favoured him, for a man with tired horses stopped his carriage to
inquire if that were the Count Marcos de Sarrion. He had brought Juanita
to Saragossa in his carriage, not with Sor Teresa, but with the Mother
Superior of the school and two other pupils. He had been dismissed at the
Plaza de la Constitucion, and the ladies had taken another carriage. He
had not heard the address given to the driver.

By daylight Marcos returned to the Palacio Sarrion without having
discovered the driver of the second carriage or the whereabouts of
Juanita in Saragossa. But he had learnt that a carriage had been ordered
by telegraph from a station on the Pampeluna line to be at Alagon at four
o'clock in the morning. He learnt also that telegraphic communication
between Pampeluna and Saragossa was interrupted.

The Carlists again.

CHAPTER XVII

AT THE INN OF THE TWO TREES
At dawn the next morning, Marcos and Sarrion rode out of the city towards
Alagon by the great high road many inches deep in dust which has always
been the main artery of the capital of Aragon.

The pace was leisurely; for the carriage they were going to meet had been
timed to leave Alagon fifteen miles away at four o'clock. There was but
one road. They could scarcely miss it.

It was seven o'clock when they halted at a roadside inn. Sarrion quitted
the saddle and went indoors to order coffee while Marcos sat on his tall
black horse scanning the road in front of him. The valley of the Ebro is
flat here, with bare, brown hills rising on either side like a gigantic
mud-fence. Strings of carts were making their way towards Saragossa. Far
away, Marcos could perceive a recurrent break in the dusty line. A cart
or carriage traveling at a greater than the ordinary market pace was
making its laborious way past the heavier traffic. It came at length
within clearer sight; a carriage all white with dus