disgraceful mongrel.

Perro had risen from a slumberous contemplation of the tumbling water and
now stood awaiting orders, his near hind leg shaking with eagerness to
please, by running anywhere at any pace.

Marcos never spoke to his dog. He had seen Spain humbled to the dust by
babble, and the sight had, perhaps, dried up the spring of his speech.
For he rarely spoke idly. If he had anything to say, he said it. But if
he had nothing, he was silent. Which is, of course, fatal to social
advancement, and set him at one stroke outside the pale of political
life. Spain at this time, and, indeed, during the last thirty years, had
been the happy hunting ground of the beau sabreur, of those (of all men,
most miserable) who owe their success in life to a woman's favour.

This silent Spaniard might, perhaps, have made for himself a name in the
world's arena in other days; for he had a spark of that genius which
creates a leader. But fate had ruled that he should have no wider sphere
than an obscure Pyrenean gorge, no greater a following than the men of
the Valley of the Wolf. These he held in an iron grip. Within his deep
and narrow head lay the secret which neither Madrid nor Bayonne could
ever understand; why the Valley of the Wolf was neither Royalist nor
Carlist. The quiet, slow eyes had alone seen into the hearts of the wild
Navarrese mountaineers and knew the way to rule them.

It may be thought that their small number made the task an easy one. But
it must also be remembered that these mountain slopes have given to the
world the finest guerilla soldiers that history has known, and are
peopled by one of the untamed races of mankind.