modestly estimating the worth of their services at the sum of
thirteenpence per diem. After all, the value of a man's life is but
the price of his daily hire.

'We did not pay them much,' said General Vincente with a deprecating
little smile, 'but they did not fight much. Their pay was generally
in arrear, and they were usually in the rear as well. What will
you, my dear Conyngham? You are a commercial people--you keep good
soldiers in the shop window, and when a buyer comes you serve him
with second-class goods from behind the counter.'

He beamed on Conyngham with a pleasant air of benign connivance in a
very legitimate commercial transaction.

This is no time or place to go into the history of the English
Legion in Spain, which, indeed, had quitted that country before
Conyngham landed there, horrified by the barbarities of a cruel war
where prisoners received no quarter and the soldiers on either side
were left without pay or rations. In a half-hearted manner England
went to the assistance of the Queen Regent of Spain, and one error
in statesmanship led to many. It is always a mistake to strike
gently.

'This country,' said General Vincente in his suavest manner, 'owes
much to yours, my dear Conyngham; but it would have been better for
us both had we owed you a little more.'

During the five years prior to Conyngham's arrival at Ronda the war
had raged with unabated fury, swaying from the west to the east
coast as fortune smiled or frowned on the Carlist cause. At one