refined, and his eyes intelligent.

"I want you to go straight to Torre Garda with this letter, and give it
into the hand of my son with your own hand. It is important. You may be
watched and followed; you understand?"

The man nodded. They are a taciturn people in Aragon and Navarre--so
taciturn that in politely greeting the passer on the road they cut down
the curt good-day. "Buenas," they say, and that is all.

"Go with God," said the Count, and the messenger left the room
noiselessly, for they wear no shoe-leather in this dry land.

There was a train in those days to Pampeluna and a daily post, but then,
as now, a letter of any importance is better sent by hand, while the
railway is still looked upon with suspicion by the authorities as a means
of circulating malcontents and spreading crime. Every train is still
inspected at each stopping place by two of the civil guards.

The Count was early astir the next morning. He knew that a man such as
Marcos, possessing the instinct of the chase and that deep insight into
the thoughts and actions of others, even into the thoughts and actions of
animals, which makes a great hunter or a great captain, would never have
let slip the feeble clue that he had of the incident in the Calle San
Gregorio. The Count had been a politician in his youth, and his position
entailed a passive continuance of the policy he had actively advocated in
earlier days. But as an old sailor, weary with the battle of many storms,
learns at last to treat the thunder and the tempest with a certain
tolerant contempt, so he, having passed through evil monarchies and
corrupt regencies, through the storm of anarchy and the humiliation of a