at the sun. Then he raised his arm very slowly and took his red
boina off his bald head. I watched her smiling at him all the
time. I daresay she knew him as well as she knew the old rock.
Very old rock. The rock of ages--and the aged man--landmarks of
her youth. Then the mules started walking smartly forward, with
the three peasants striding alongside of them, and vanished between
the trees. These fellows were most likely sent out by her uncle
the Cura.

"It was a peaceful scene, the morning light, the bit of open
country framed in steep stony slopes, a high peak or two in the
distance, the thin smoke of some invisible caserios, rising
straight up here and there. Far away behind us the guns had ceased
and the echoes in the gorges had died out. I never knew what peace
meant before. . .

"Nor since," muttered Mr. Blunt after a pause and then went on.
"The little stone church of her uncle, the holy man of the family,
might have been round the corner of the next spur of the nearest
hill. I dismounted to bandage the shoulder of my trooper. It was
only a nasty long scratch. While I was busy about it a bell began
to ring in the distance. The sound fell deliciously on the ear,
clear like the morning light. But it stopped all at once. You
know how a distant bell stops suddenly. I never knew before what
stillness meant. While I was wondering at it the fellow holding
our horses was moved to uplift his voice. He was a Spaniard, not a
Basque, and he trolled out in Castilian that song you know,


"'Oh bells of my native village,