And the Englishman rode forward with a jolly laugh and his hand held out. Larralde took it without enthusiasm. It was rather difficult to pick a picturesque quarrel with such a person as this. Moreover, the true conspirator never believes in another man's honesty.

'Who would have expected to meet you here?' went on Conyngham jovially.

'It is not so surprising as you think.'

'Oh!'

There was no mistaking Larralde's manner, and the Englishman's gay blue eyes hardened suddenly and rather surprisingly.

'No, I have followed you. I want that letter.'

'Well, as it happens, Senor Larralde, I have not got your letter, and if I had I am not quite sure that I would give it to you. Your conduct in the matter has not been over-nice, and, to tell you the truth, I don't think much of a man who gets strangers and women to do his dirty work for him.'

Larralde stroked his moustache with a half-furtive air of contempt.

'I should have given the confounded letter to the Alcalde of Ronda if it had not been that a lady would have suffered for it, and let you take your chance, Senor Larralde.'

Larralde shrugged his shoulders.

'You would not have given it to the Alcalde of Ronda,' he said in a sneering voice, 'because you want it yourself. You require it in order to make your peace with Estella Vincente.'

'We are not going to talk of Senorita Vincente,' said Conyngham quietly. 'You say you followed me because you wanted that letter.

It is not in my possession. I left it in the house of Colonel Monreal at Xeres. If you are going on to Madrid, I think I will sit down here and have a cigarette. If, on the other hand, you propose resting here, I shall proceed, as it is getting late.'

Conyngham looked at his companion with a nod and a smile which was not in the least friendly and at the same time quite cheerful. He seemed to recognise the necessity of quarrelling, but proposed to do so as light-heartedly as possible. They were both on horseback in the middle of the road, Larralde a few paces in the direction of Madrid.

Conyngham indicated the road with an inviting wave of the hand.

'Will you go on?' he asked.

Larralde sat looking at him with glittering eyes, and said nothing.

'Then I will continue my journey,' said the Englishman, touching his horse lightly with the spur. The horse moved on and pa.s.sed within a yard of the other. At this moment Larralde rose in his stirrups and flung himself on one side.

Conyngham gave a sharp cry of pain and threw back his head.

Larralde had stabbed him in the back. The Englishman swayed in the saddle as if trying to balance himself, his legs bent back from the knee in the sharpness of a biting pain. The heavy stirrups swung free. Then, slowly, Conyngham toppled forward and rolled out of the saddle, falling to the road with a thud.

Larralde watched him with a white face and staring eyes. Then he looked quickly round over the darkening landscape. There was no one in sight. This was one of the waste places of the world. Larralde seemed to remember the Eye that seeth even there, and crossed himself as he slipped from the saddle to the ground. He was shaking all over. His face was ashen, for it is a terrible thing to kill a man and be left alone with him.

Conyngham's eyes were closed. There was blood on his lips. With hands that shook like leaves Esteban Larralde searched the Englishman, found nothing, and cursed his ill fortune. Then he stood upright, and in the dim light his face shone as if he had dipped it in water. He crept into the saddle and rode on towards Madrid.

It was quite dark when Conyngham recovered consciousness. In turning him over to search his pockets Larralde had perhaps, unwittingly, saved his life by placing him in a position that checked the internal haemorrhage. What served to bring back the Englishman's wandering senses was the rumbling of heavy wheels and the crack of a great whip as a cart laden with hay and drawn by six mules approached him from the direction of Toledo.

The driver of the team was an old soldier, as indeed were most of the Castilians at this time, and knew how to handle wounded men.

With great care and a mult.i.tude of oaths he lifted Conyngham on to his cart and proceeded with him to Madrid.

CHAPTER XIII. A WISE IGNORAMUS.

'G.o.d help me! I know nothing--can but pray.'

It was Father Concha's custom to attend, at his church between the hours of nine and ten in the morning, to such wants spiritual or temporal as individual members of his flock chose to bring to him.

Thus it usually happened that the faithful found the old priest at nine o'clock sunning himself at the front door of the sacred edifice, smoking a reflective cigarette and exchanging the time of day with pa.s.sers-by or such as had leisure to pause a moment.

'Whether it is body or soul that is in trouble--come to me,' he would say. 'For the body I can do a little--a very little. I have twenty pounds a year, and it is not always paid to me, but I sometimes have a trifle for charity. For the soul I can do a little more.' After a storm of wind and rain, such as come in the winter- time, it was no uncommon sight to see the priest sweeping the leaves and dust from the church steps and using the strongest language at the bootmaker over the way whose business this was supposed to be.

'See!' he would cry to some pa.s.ser-by. 'See!--it is thus that our sacristan does his work. It is for this that the Holy Church pays him fifteen--or is it twenty?--pesetas each year.'

And the bootmaker would growl and shake his head over his last; for, like most who have to do with leather, he was a man of small humour.

Here, too, mothers would bring their children--little girls cowering under their bright handkerchiefs, the mantilla of the poor, and speak with the Padre of the Confirmation and first Communion which had lately begun to hang like a cloud over the child's life. Father Concha would take the child upon his knee as he sat on the low wall at the side of the steps, and when the mother had left them, would talk quietly with the lines of his face wonderfully softened, so that before long the little girl would run home quite happy in mind and no longer afraid of the great unknown. Here, in the spring time, came the young men with thoughts appropriate to the season, and sheepish exceedingly; for they knew that Father Concha knew all about them, and would take an unfair advantage of his opportunities, refusing probably to perform the ceremony until he was satisfied as to the ways and means and prudence of the contracting parties--which of course he had no right to do. Here came the halt, the lame, the blind, the poor, and also the rich. Here came the unhappy. They came naturally and often. Here, so the bootmaker tells, came one morning a ruined man, who after speaking a few words to the Padre, produced a revolver and tried to shoot himself. And the Padre fell on him like a wild beast. And they fought, and fell, and rolled down the steps together into the road, where they still fought till they were white like millers with dust. Then at last the Padre got the strong man under him and took the revolver away and threw it into the ditch. Then he fell to belabouring the would-be suicide with his fists, until the big man cried for mercy and received it not.

'You saved his life,' the people said.

'It was his soul that I was caring for,' replied the Padre with his grim smile.

Concha was not a clever man, but he was wise. Of learning he had but little. It is easy, however, to be wise without being learned.

It is easier still to be learned without being wise. The world is full of such persons to-day when education is too cheap. Concha steered his flock as best he could through the stormy paths of insurrection and civil war. He ruled with a rod of iron whom he could, and such as were beyond his reach he influenced by ridicule and a patient tolerance. True to his cloth, he was the enemy of all progress and distrusted every innovation.

'The Padre,' said the barber, who was a talker and a radical, 'would have the world stand still.'

'The Padre,' replied Concha, tenderly drying his chin with a towel, 'would have all barbers attend to their razors. Many are so busy shouting "Advance!" that they have no breath to ask whither they are going.'

On the whole, perhaps, his autocratic rule was a beneficent one, and contributed to the happiness of the little northern suburb of Ronda over which it extended. At all events, he was a watchful guardian of his flock, and knew every face in his parish.

It thus happened one morning that a strange woman, who had come quietly into church to pray, attracted his attention as he pa.s.sed out after matins. She was a mere peasant and ill clad. The child seated on a chair by her side and staring with wondering eyes at the simple altar and stained-gla.s.s window had a hungry look.

Concha sat down on the low wall without the doors and awaited the exit of this devotee who was not of his flock. For though, as he often said, the good G.o.d had intended him for a soldier, his own strong will and simple faith had in time produced a very pa.s.sable priest who, with a grim face, went about doing good.

The woman presently lifted the heavy leathern curtain and let out into the sunlight a breath of cool, incense-laden air.

She curtsied and paused as if expecting recognition. Concha threw away his cigarette and raised his hand to his hat. He had not lifted it except to ladies of the highest quality for some years, out of regard to symptoms of senile decay which had manifested themselves at the junction of the brim and the crown.

'Have I not seen your face before, my child?' he said.

'Yes, reverendo. I am of Ronda but have been living in Xeres.'

'Ah! then your husband is no doubt a malcontent?'

The woman burst into tears, burying her face in her hands and leaning against the wall in an att.i.tude that was still girlish. She had probably been married at fifteen.

'No, reverendo! He is a thief.'

Concha merely nodded his head. He never had been a man to betray much pious horror when he heard of ill-doing.