slope of the Pyrenees. It was a
warm night and there had been no rain for some days. The dust lay thickly
on the road, muffling the beat of the horse's feet. The Wolf roared in
its narrow bed. The road, only recently made practicable for carriages at
Sarrion's expense, was not a safe one. It hung like a cornice on the
left-hand bank of the river and at certain corners the stones fell from
the mountain heights almost continuously. In other places the heavy stone
buttresses had been undermined by the action of the river. It was a road
that needed continuous watching and repair. But Marcos had ridden over it
a few hours earlier and there had been no change of weather since.

He knew the weak places and passed them carefully. Three miles below the
village, the river passes through a gorge and the road mounts to the lip
of the overhanging cliffs. There is no danger here; for there are no
falling stones from above. It is to this passage that the Wolf owes its
name and in a narrow place invisible from the road the water seems to
growl after the manner of a wild beast at meat.

Marcos' horse knew the road well enough, which, moreover, was easy here.
For it is cut from the rock on the left-hand side, while its outer
boundary is marked at intervals by white stones. The horse was perhaps
too cautious. By night a rider must leave to his mount the decision as to
what hills may be descended at a trot. Marcos knew that the old horse
beneath him invariably decided to walk down the easiest declivity. At the
summit of the road the horse was trotting at a long, regular stride. On
the turn of the hill he proposed to stop, although he must have known
that the descent was easy. Marcos touched him with the spur and he
started forward. The next instant he fell so suddenly and badly that his
forehead scraped the road.

Marcos was thrown so hard and so far that he fell on his head and
shoulder three feet in front of the horse. It was the narrowest place in
the whole road, and the knowledge of this flashed through Marcos' mind as
he fell. He struck one of the white stones that mark the boundary of the
road, and heard his collar-bone snap like a dry stick. Then he rolled
over the edge of the precipice into the blackness filled by the roar of
the river.

He still had one hand whole and ready, though the skin was scraped from
it, and the fingers of this hand were firmly twisted into the bridle. He
hung for a moment jerked hither and thither by t