hoarse breath, made him shudder. He opened his eyes
and feeling about him with his hands, he sensed the
coarse hairs of a large pig which, resenting the presence of
a neighbor, began to grunt.

All Luis' efforts to sleep proved quite useless, not
only because the pain of his wound or the bruises on his
flesh smarted, but because he suddenly realized the
exact nature of his failure.

Yes, failure! For he had never learned to appreciate
exactly the difference between fulminating sentences of
death upon bandits in the columns of a small country
newspaper and actually setting out in search of them,
and tracking them to their lairs, gun in hand. During his
first day's march as volunteer lieutenant, he had begun to
suspect the error of his ways--a brutal sixty miles'
journey it was, that left his hips and legs one mass of
raw soreness and soldered all his bones together. A week
later, after his first skirmish against the rebels, he under-
stood every rule of the game. Luis Cervantes would have
taken up a crucifix and solemnly sworn that as soon as
the soldiers, gun in hand, stood ready to shoot, some pro-
foundly eloquent voice had spoken behind them, saying,
"Run for your lives." It was all crystal clear. Even his
noble-spirited horse, accustomed to battle, sought to
sweep back on its hind legs and gallop furiously away,
to stop only at a safe distance from the sound of firing.
The sun was setting, the mountain became peopled with
vague and restless shadows, darkness scaled the ram-