"It is not a false alarm?" she inquired. "The Carlists are really out?"

For she had fallen into the habit of the Northern Provinces, of speaking of the insurrection as if it were a recurrent flood.

"They have been preparing all the winter," answered Sor Teresa.

"And Pampeluna is to be invested?"

"Yes."

"And Torre Garda?..."

"Torre Garda," answered the nun, "is to be taken this time. The Carlists have decided to besiege it. It is at the mouth of the valley that the fighting is taking place."

"Then I will go back to Torre Garda," said Juanita.

CHAPTER XXVI

AT THE FORD "They will allow two nuns to pa.s.s anywhere," said Sor Teresa with her chilling smile as she led the way to her own cell in the corridor overhead. She provided Juanita with that dress which is a pa.s.sport through any quarter of a town, across any frontier; to any battlefield.

So Juanita took the veil at last--in order to return to Marcos.

Sor Teresa's words proved true enough at the city gates where the sentinels recognised her and allowed her carriage to pa.s.s across the drawbridge by a careless nod of acquiescence to the driver.

It was a clear dark night without a moon. The prevailing wind which hurries down from the Pyrenees to the warmer plains of Spain stirred the budding leaves of the trees that border the road below the town walls.

"I suppose," said Sor Teresa suddenly, "that Evasio Mon was at Torre Garda to-day."

"Yes."

"And you left him there when you came away."

"Yes."

"We shall meet him on the road," said Sor Teresa with a note of anxiety in her voice. Presently she stood up in the carriage which was an open one on high wheels and spoke to the driver in a low voice into his ear.

He was a stout and respectable man with a good ecclesiastical clientele in the pious capital of Navarre. He had a confidential manner.

The distant firing had ceased now and a great stillness reigned over the bare land. There are no trees here to harbour birds or to rustle in the wind. The man, nursing his horses for the long journey, drove at an easy pace. Juanita, usually voluble enough, seemed to have nothing to say to Sor Teresa. The driver could possibly overhear the conversation of his pa.s.sengers. For this, or for another reason, Sor Teresa was silent.

As they approached the hills, they found themselves in a more broken country. They climbed and descended with a rather irritating regularity.

The spurs of the Pyrenees keep their form right down to the plains and the road to Torre Garda pa.s.ses over them. Juanita leant sideways out of the carnage and stared upwards into the pine trees.

"Do you see anything?" asked Sor Teresa.

"No--I can see nothing."

"There is a chapel up there, on the slope."

"Our Lady of the Shadows," answered Juanita and lapsed into silence again. She knew now why the name had struck her with such foreboding, when she had learnt it from the lips of the laughing young captain of infantry.

It told of calamity--the greatest that can happen to a woman--to be married without love.

The driver turned in his seat and tried to overhear. He seemed uneasy and looked about him with quick turns of the head. At last, when his horses were mounting a hill, he turned round.

"Did these sainted ladies hear anything?" he asked.

"No," answered Sor Teresa. "Why do you ask?"

"There has been a man on horseback on the road behind us," he answered with a.s.sumed carelessness, "all the way from Pampeluna. He has now taken a short cut and is in front on the road above us; I can hear him; that is all."

And he gave a little cry to his horses; the signal for them to trot. They were approaching the mouth of the Valley of the Wolf, and could hear the sound of its wild waters in the darkness below them. The valley opens out like a fan with either slope rising at an easy angle to the pine woods.

The road is a cornice cut on the western bank upon which side it runs for ten miles until the bridge below the village of Torre Garda leads it across the river to the sunny slope where the village crouches below the ancient castle from which the name is taken.

The horses were going at a walking pace now, and the driver to show, perhaps, his nonchalance and fearlessness was humming a song beneath his breath, when suddenly the hillside burst into flame and a deafening roar of musketry stunned both horses and driver. Juanita happened to be looking up at the hillside and she saw the fire run along like a snake of flame in the gra.s.s. In a moment the carriage had swung round and the horses were going at a gallop down the hill again. The driver stood up.

He had a rein in either hand and he hauled the horses round each successive corner with consummate skill. All the while he used language which would have huddled Cousin Peligros shrieking in the bottom of the carriage.

Juanita and Sor Teresa stood up and looked back. By the light of the firing they saw a man lying low on his horse's neck galloping headlong through the zone of death after them.

"Did you hear the bullets?" said Juanita breathlessly. "They were like the wind through the telegraph-wires. Oh, I should like to be a man; I should like to be a soldier!"

And she gave a low laugh of thrilling excitement.

The driver was now pulling up his horses. He too laughed aloud.

"It is the troops," he cried. "They thought we were the Carlists. But, who is this, Senoras? It is that man again."

He leant back and hastily twisted one of the carriage-lamps round in its socket so as to show a light behind him towards the newcomer.

As the rider pulled up he came within the rays of the lamp which was a powerful one; and at the sight of him Juanita gave a sharp cry which neither she nor any that heard it forgot to the end of their lives.

"It is Marcos," she cried, clutching Sor Teresa's arm. "And he came through that--he came through that!"

"No one hurt?" asked Marcos' deep voice.

"No one hurt, Senor," answered the driver who had recognised him.

"And the horses?"

"The horses are safe. A malediction upon them; they nearly had us over the cliff. Those are the troops. They took us for Carlists."

"No," said Marcos. "They are the Carlists. The troops have been driven farther up the valley where they are entrenched. They have sent to Pampeluna for help. This is a Carlist trap to catch the reinforcements as they approach. They thought your carriage was a gun."

The driver scratched his head and made known his views as to the ancestory of the Carlists.

"There is no getting into the valley to-night," said Marcos to Sor Teresa and Juanita. "You must return to Pampeluna."

"And what will you do?" asked Juanita in a hard voice.