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hour was now very late, and all the houses were dark, excepting the posada, where the new guard awaited us. Pedro was for spending the rest of the night here, but I said, "Come! Surely we can make shift to keep awake until daybreak. By now we must be little more than seven leagues from Villaverde; let us press on."
    "Ay," said Pedro doubtfully, "but the road from Becerrea is little more than a track—"
    "Well, let us make a try, at all events." Now that we were so close to home, I was wild with impatience to finish the journey.
    So at Becerrea we left our companions, who all shouted a friendly farewell, and turned northeast off the main
carretera.
    Happily for us, the mist had thinned as we descended the mountain, and there was moonlight to guide us on our way down a narrow valley beside yet another foaming torrent. We must follow this valley to where it was joined by a second, then turn southeast up that one; the cart tracks in this region follow the valleys; only sheep tracks cross the mountain ridges.
    At a little village called Navia we had to make the turn, but here Pedro said apologetically, "I must rest awhile, Señor Felix. My eyes keep closing. And my poor beast keeps stumbling. An hour's sleep will see me fit to finish the journey."
    "
Vaya.
Sleep then. My mule can do with a rest, too. I'll keep watch—I'm too restless for sleep."
    Navia was too small to boast even the meanest
albergue.
But there was a farmyard with an open shed where, amid a thin litter of last year's hay, two scrawny cows were stabled. In half a minute Pedro had fed some of the hay to the mules and scraped himself a pile of it on which to cast himself down.
    Far from sleep myself, I sat down upon another truss, elbows on knees, and listened to the peaceful sound of our tethered mules munching the stale fodder. Poor things, they had traveled more than twenty leagues at a spanking pace; they deserved a better meal. If the farmer showed himself early enough, we could ask if he had barley or oats.
    The great stars paled and sparkled overhead, the mountain ridges on either side of the valley showed blacker as the eastern sky began to lighten. But down here, in the valley bottom, it was still pitch dark when I began to hear the shod hooves of two horses come rapping along the road from Becerrea.
    My mind had been rambling vaguely over many subjects—Juana, shut away in her French convent; my grandfather and his friendship with Rafael Riego, the Liberal leader; the story of King Oedipus that I had been reading; the gold treasure lost during General Moore's retreat; the brigands who infest these mountains, and indeed all of Spain; my tutor saying in a resigned tone, when I asked him what could help Spain, "Time alone is the cure. Maybe in a hundred years..." A hundred years is a long time, a very long time ... I thought, beginning to nod off, but the sound of the hooves brought me full awake, all in a minute.
    I could just see the two mounts, with their riders, pass the entrance to our yard; they were little more than shadows, but I caught the gleam of a stirrup and heard the clink of a bit. They did not pause, but rode quietly on their way.
    I touched Pedro's arm, and he was awake in a moment.
    "Psst! Two riders have just gone past!"
    "
Maladetta!
Did you see their faces?"
    "No, it was too dark. But, more important, they did not see us."
    "Are you sure?"
    "Yes."
    "How can we make use of that?" Pedro fell silent, gnawing his lip in thought.
    The farmers pair of heifers had been lowing for some time, clamoring to be milked, and the man himself now made his appearance, yawning and surly—but was appeased when we gave him a
cuarto
for the use of his fodder, and told him that we were on our way to Villaverde. Everybody for miles around knew of my grandfather and respected his name. Pedro asked the man if he had any idea who the two travelers could be that had passed so secretly in the dead of night. Did people often pass through Navia at such an