"Does not all the land belong to you patriots?" the voice on the other
side of the door screamed on. "Are you not a patriot?"

Gaspar Ruiz did not know. "I am a wounded man," he said apathetically.

All became still inside. Gaspar Ruiz lost the hope of being admitted,
and lay down under the porch just outside the door. He was utterly
careless of what was going to happen to him. All his consciousness
seemed to be concentrated in his neck, where he felt a severe pain.
His indifference as to his fate was genuine.

The day was breaking when he awoke from a feverish doze; the door at
which he had knocked in the dark stood wide open now, and a girl,
steadying herself with her outspread arms, leaned over the threshold.
Lying on his back, he stared up at her. Her face was pale and her eyes
were very dark; her hair hung down black as ebony against her white
cheeks; her lips were full and red. Beyond her he saw another head
with long grey hair, and a thin old face with a pair of anxiously
clasped hands under the chin.




VI

"I KNEW those people by sight," General Santierra would tell his
guests at the dining-table. "I mean the people with whom Gaspar Ruiz
found shelter. The father was an old Spaniard, a man of property,
ruined by the revolution. His estates, his house in town, his money,
everything he had in the world had been confiscated by proclamation,