as intensely as possible in a family from the next compartment,
London-tailored, and speaking either Spanish or English as they fancied,
who we somehow understood lived at Barcelona; but nothing came of our
interest. Then as the day waned we threw ourselves into the interest
taken by a fellow-passenger in a young Spanish girl of thirteen or
fourteen who had been in the care of a youngish middle-aged man when our
train stopped, and been then abandoned by him for hours, while he seemed
to be satisfying a vain curiosity at the head of the train. She owned
that the deserter was her father, and while we were still poignantly
concerned for her he came back and relieved the anxiety which the girl
herself had apparently not shared even under pressure of the whole
compartment's sympathy.




IV


The day waned more and more; the sun began to sink, and then it sank
with that sudden drop which the sun has at last. The sky flushed
crimson, turned mauve, turned gray, and the twilight thickened over the
summits billowing softly westward. There had been a good deal of
joking, both Spanish and English, among the passengers; I had found
particularly cheering the richness of a certain machinist's trousers of
bright golden corduroy; but as the shades of night began to embrown the
scene our spirits fell; and at the cry of a lonesome bird, far off where
the sunset had been, they followed the sun in its sudden drop. Against
the horizon a peasant boy leaned on his staff and darkled against the
darkening sky.