came into the room with startling distinctness. The boom of
the distant guns disputing the advance of the Carlists; while nearer, the
bugles called the men to arms and the heavy tramp of feet came and went
in the Calle de la Dormitaleria.

"Well," asked Sor Teresa. "What have you decided to do?"

Juanita listened to the alarm of war for a moment before turning from the
window.

"It is not a false alarm?" she inquired. "The Carlists are really out?"

For she had fallen into the habit of the Northern Provinces, of speaking
of the insurrection as if it were a recurrent flood.

"They have been preparing all the winter," answered Sor Teresa.

"And Pampeluna is to be invested?"

"Yes."

"And Torre Garda?..."

"Torre Garda," answered the nun, "is to be taken this time. The Carlists
have decided to besiege it. It is at the mouth of the valley that the
fighting is taking place."

"Then I will go back to Torre Garda," said Juanita.

CHAPTER XXVI

AT THE FORD
"They will allow two nuns to pass anywhere," said Sor Teresa with her
chilling smile as she led the way to her own cell in the corridor
overhead. She provided Juanita with that dress which is a passport
through any quarter of a town, across any frontier; to any battlefield.
So Juanita took the veil at last--in order to return to Marcos.

Sor Teresa's words proved true enough at the city gates where the
sentinels recognised her and allowed her carriage to pass across the
drawbridge by a careless nod of acquiescence to the driver.

It was a clear dark night without a moon. The prevailing wind which
hurries down from the Pyrenees to the warmer plains of Spain stirred the
budding leaves of the trees that border the road below the town walls.

"I suppose," said Sor Teresa suddenly, "that Evasio Mon was at Torre
Garda to-day."

"Yes."

"And you left him there when you came away."

"Yes."

"We shall meet him on the road," said Sor Teresa with a note of anxiety
in her voice. Presently she stood up in the carriage which was an open
one on high wheels and spoke to the driver in a low voice into his ear.
He was a stout and respectable man with a good ecclesiastical clientele
in the pious capital of Navarre. He had a confidential manner.

The distant firing had ceased now and a great stillness reigned over the
bare land. There are no trees here to harbour birds or to rustle in the
wind. The man, nursing his horses for the long journey, drove at an easy
p