at Torre
Garde no change had been made in the simple household. But now Marcos had
sent from Saragossa such modern furniture as women need to-day. There
were new chairs on the terrace. Her own bedroom at the western corner of
the house, next door to the huge room occupied by Sarrion, had been
entirely refurnished and newly decorated.

"Oh, how pretty!" she exclaimed, and Marcos lingering in the long passage
perhaps heard the remark.

Later, when they were all in the drawing-room awaiting dinner, Juanita
clasped Sarrion's arm with her wonted little gesture of affection.

"You are an old dear," she said to him, "to have my room done up so
beautifully, so clean, and white, and simple--just as you know I should
like it. Oh, you need not smile so grimly. You know it was just what I
should like--did he not, Marcos?"

"Yes," answered Marcos.

"And it is the only room in the house that has been done. I looked into
the others to see--into your great barrack, and into Marcos' room at the
end of the balcony. I have guessed why Marcos has that room ..."

"Why?" he asked.

"So that you can see down the valley--so that Perro who sleeps on the
balcony outside the open window has merely to lift his head to look right
down to where the other watch-dogs are, ten miles away."

After dinner, Juanita discovered that there was a new piano in the
drawing-room, in addition to a number of those easier chairs which our
grandmothers never knew. Cousin Peligros protested that they were
unnecessary and even conducive to sloth and indolence. Still protesting,
she took the most comfortable and sat with folded hands listening to
Juanita finding out the latest waltz, with variations of her own, on the
new piano.

Sarrion and Marcos were on the terrace smoking. The small new moon was
nearing the west. The night would be dark after its setting. They were
silent, listening to the voice of their ancestral river as it growled,
heavy with snow, through the defile. Presently a servant brought coffee
and told Marcos that a messenger was waiting to deliver a note. After the
manner of Spain the messenger was invited to come and deliver his letter
in person. He was a traveling knife-grinder, he explained, and had
received the letter from a man on the road whose horse had gone lame. One
must be mutually helpful on the road.

The letter was from Zeneta at the end of the valley; written hastily in
pencil. The Carlists were in force between him and Pampe