And where the road turned round that fold of the plain, lolling a
little to its left in the idle Spanish air, they came upon the
village all in view. I do not know how to describe this village to
you, my reader, for the words that mean to you what it was are all
the wrong words to use. "Antique," "old-world," "quaint," seem
words with which to tell of it. Yet it had no antiquity denied to
the other villages; it had been brought to birth like them by the
passing of time, and was nursed like them in the lap of plains or
valleys of Spain. Nor was it quainter than any of its neighbours,
though it was like itself alone, as they had their characters
also; and, though no village in the world was like it, it differed
only from the next as sister differs from sister. To those that
dwelt in it, it was wholly apart from all the world of man.

Most of its tall white houses with green doors were gathered about
the market-place, in which were pigeons and smells and declining
sunlight, as Rodriguez and his escort came towards it, and from
round a corner at the back of it the short, repeated song of one
who would sell a commodity went up piercingly.

This was all very long ago. Time has wrecked that village now.
Centuries have flowed over it, some stormily, some smoothly, but
so many that, of the village Rodriguez saw, there can be now no
more than wreckage. For all I know a village of that name may
stand on that same plain, but the Saint Judas-not-Iscariot that
Rodriguez knew is gone like youth.

Queerly tiled, sheltered by small dense trees, and standing a
little apart, Rodriguez recognised the house of the Priest. He