"

"They are honest enough, though their appearance may be disquieting."

"Oh! I am not afraid of them," answered Juanita, with a shrewd and mystic
smile. "It is Cousin Peligros who fears them. She scolded me for speaking
to one of them on the verandah. It undermines the pedestal upon which a
lady should always stand. Am I on a pedestal, Marcos?"

She looked back at him over her shoulder, through the fold of her
mantilla. It was an opportunity, perhaps, which a skillful lover would
have seized. Marcos was silent for a moment. Then he spoke in a repressed
voice.

"If they come again," he said, "I should like to see them."

But Juanita had already put into the apothecary's lips a command that no
visitors should be admitted.

She kept this up for some days, but was at length forced to give way.
Marcos was so obviously on the high road to recovery. There was no
suggestion of an after-effect of the slight concussion of the brain which
had rendered him insensible.

It was Short Knife who first gained admittance to the sick-room. He was
quite a simple person, smelling of sheep, and endowed with a tact which
is as common among the peasantry as amid the great. There was no sign of
embarrassment in his manner, and he omitted to remove his beret from his
close-cropped head until he saw Juanita whom he saluted curtly, replacing
his cap with a calm unconsciousness before he nodded to Marcos.

"It was you I heard singing the Basque songs as I climbed the hill," he
said, addressing Juanita first with the instinct of a gentleman. "You
speak Basque?"

"I understand it, at all events, though I cannot speak it as well as
Marcos."

"Oh, he!" said the man, glancing towards the bed. "He is one of us--one
of us. Do you know the song that the women of the valley sing to their
babies? I cannot sing to you for I have no voice except for the goats.
They are not particular, the goats--they like music. They stand round me
and listen. But if you are passing in the mountain my wife will sing it
to you--she knows it well. We have many round the table--God be thanked.
It makes them sleep when they are contrary. It tells how easy it is to
kill a Frenchman."

Then, having observed the conventionalities, he turned eagerly to Marcos.

Juanita listened to them for a short time while they spoke together in
the Basque tongue. Then she went to the balcony and stood there, leaning
her arms on the iron rail, looking out over the valley with thought