purpose it would assuredly fall to Marcos' lot to execute that which his
father had conceived. The older man's presence suggested the Court, while
Marcos was clearly intended for the Camp.

The Count de Sarrion had passed through both and had emerged half
cynical, half indifferent from the slough of an evil woman's downfall.

"You would have made a good soldier," he said to Marcos, when his son at
last came home to Torre Garda with an education completed in England and
France. "But there is no opening for an honest man in the Spanish Army.
Honesty is in the gutter in Spain to-day."

And Marcos always followed his father's advice. Later he found that Spain
indeed offered no career to honest men at this time. Gradually he
supplanted his father in an unrecognised, indefinable monarchy in the
Valley of the Wolf; and there, in the valley, they waited; as good
Spaniards have waited these hundred years until such time as God's wrath
shall be overpast.

"I have a long story to tell you," said the Count, when his son returned
and sat down at once with a keen appetite to his first breakfast of
coffee and bread. "And I will tell it without comment, without prejudice,
if I can."

Marcos nodded. The Count had lighted a cigarette and now leant against
the window which opened on to the heavily barred balcony overlooking the
Calle San Gregorio.

"Four nights ago," he said, "at about midnight, Francisco de Mogente
returned secretly to Saragossa. I think he was coming to this house; but