ancient battle-field, and as a boy, tending the sheep on the uplands,
he had conned it often and curiously, having heard the old men tell
tales of it. The battle had been fought on a wide plain intersected
by many water-dykes. Twice or thrice he had taken a holiday to
explore it, half expecting that a close view would tell him something
of its history; but, having no books to help him, he had brought back
very little beyond a sense of awe that so tremendous a thing had
happened just there, and (unconsciously) a stored remembrance of the
scents blown across the level from the flowers that lined the dykes--
scents of mint and meadow-sweet at home there, as the hawthorn was at
home on the hills above.

He smelt them now, across the reek of San Sebastian, and they wafted
him back to England--to boyhood, dreaming of war but innocent of its
crimes--to long thoughts, long summer days spent among the unheeding
sheep, his dog Rover beside him--an almost thoroughbred collie, and a
good dog, too, though his end had been tragic. . . . But why on earth
should his thoughts be running on Rover just now?

Yet, and although, as he went, England was nearer to him and more
real than the smoking heaps between which he picked his way, he
steered all the while towards the upper town, through the square, and
up the hill overlooked by the convent and the rocky base of the
citadel. He knew the exact position of the house, and he chose a
narrow street--uninhabited now, and devastated by fire--that led
directly to it.

The house was untouched by fire as yet, though another to the left of
it blazed furiously. It clung, as it were a swallow's nest, to the
face of the cliff. A garden wall ran under the front; and, parallel