by her tumbled hair hanging to her waist.


"Are you sure you have not heard from papa?"

"Quite sure--! I wish I had," he added when the door was closed behind
her.




CHAPTER IV

THE JADE--CHANCE
The same evening, by the light of his solitary lamp, in the small
room--which had been a lady's boudoir in olden days--the Count de Sarrion
sat down to write a letter to his son. He despatched it at once by a
rider to Torre Garda, far beyond Pampeluna, on the southern slope of the
Pyrenees.

"I am growing too old for this work," he said to himself as he sealed the
letter. "It wants a younger man. Marcos will do it, though he hates the
pavement. There is something of the chase in it, and Marcos is a hunter."

At his call a man came into the room, all dusty and sunburnt, a typical
man of Aragon, dry and wrinkled, burnt like a son of Sahara. His
clothing, like his face, was dust-coloured. He wore knee-breeches of
homespun, brown stockings, a handkerchief that had once been coloured
bound round his head, with the knot over his left ear. He was startlingly
rough and wild in appearance, but his features, on examination, were