The Firebrand

ecome "El Sarria," nor yet need young de Flores, the alcalde's son, have been carried home to the tall house with the courty

y were first married. Concha was niece to the priest's Manuela, a slim sloe-eyed witty thing, light of heart and foot as a goose feather that blows over a common on a northerly breeze. She had had more sweethearts than she could count on the fingers of both hand

watered by the pure mountain streams, fertile Catalunia meets stern and desolate Ara

all in one measured heave of her white throat, Concha of the house of Ramon, called "little" by that Spanish fashion of speech which would have invented a diminutive for Minerva herself, brought fire and destruction into Sarria. As the wildfire flashes from the east to the west, so the fame of her beauty went abroad. Also the wit of her re

as there. Hers was the full blood, quick-running and generous of the south, that lo

with the red of the glowing sky. And Rafael, who was to marry the vine-dresser's daughter, and so must not "eat the iron" to please any maid,

ce-that is, after her kind. It was wonderfully sad, she pleaded. She had a lover-good, generous, eager to wed her, but his family forbade, and if her kind mistress did not afford her the opportuni

sselled cane. He had an eye to the pavemented street, lest he should defile his lacquered shoes with the points carved like eagle's beaks. He whistled the jota of Aragon as he went, and-he quite forgot Ramon, the great good-humoured giant

oncha the Andaluse, because to be known as Rafael's sweetheart might interfere with her other loves, took the name of Ramon Garcia's wife in vain with light reckless hearts. This was indeed valorously foolish, though Concha with her much wisdo

to the clear air of the foot-hills from Barcelona (where a promising adventu

uched the guitar all unconscious, and danced the dance of her native Andalucia with a verve and abandon which she had never excelled. Then when Ramon discovered himself in an arbour near by and congratulated her upon her performance-in the very middle of her tearful protestations that if she had only known he was the

ncha with a pout. And indeed from Cadiz by the sea to the mountains of the north she had

alde's son without suffering for it, and it chanced that the government, having been reproached on all sides for lack of vigour

ropriated in the name of the government of the most Christian regent Do?a Maria Cristina. But how much of the produce stuck to the fingers of General Rodriguez, the military governor, and of Se?or Amado Gomez, administrator of so

ell and furies, it was all deceit! She had been deceiving him from the first! Those upward glances, those shy, sweet confidences, sudden, irresistible revealings of her heart, he had thought they were all for him. Fool! Three times fool! He knew better now. They were practised on her husband that

tness. He heard them splash against the damp stone behind him, and the limestone fell away in

r of it called the Peak of Basella. Beneath him, as he looked out upon the plain, three thousand feet below, the mist

be stormed and enveloped, by these delusive cloud-continents. They would

ak of Basella, certain white jets of spray tossed upwards as from a fountain, which were the

t had been El Sarria's spring for his rifle. His cartouches lay ready to his hand in his belt of untanne

g!

thin his cave this time, and they whistled over his head. The chips of

knew it well, but till now he had thought that but one other person did so, his friend Luis Fernandez of Sarria. But at the same moment he caught a glimpse of a blue jacket, edged w

grimly. And then he knew that it had com

were men like himself; young, trained to the life of the brigand and the contrabandista. Now they were "Migueletes"-"Mozos de la Escuadra

craft. Miguelete or red-breeched soldier, guerilla or contrabandista, none could follow him through that rising mist which boiled like a cauldr

ot. But they have yet to take Ramon Garcia!" h

cave on the Puig, past the cliff at the foot of which was perched the great and famous Abbe

red for Dolóres with more than a brother's care. The secret of the hidden passage was safe with him. Ramon held this thought to his soul amid the general wreck. This one friend at least was true. Meantime yonder was a Miguelete behind a stone-a clumsy one wi

e patted the brown polished stock almost as he used to do little Lola's cheek in the evenings when they sat at their door to watch José

ve mouth was whelmed in a chaos of grey tormented spume, like the gloom of a thundercloud. Then again it appeared to thin out till the forms of mountains very far away were seen as in a dream. But Ramon knew how fal

s. Then with a long indrawing of breath into his lungs, like a swimmer before the plunge, he s

ipped off by winter frosts and loosened by spring rains, broke suddenly into a succession of precipices. There was only one

below. A gun went off. A chorus of angry voices apostrophised the owner, who had,

second huge stone ("to amuse the gentlemen in the

ace. He found his feet again on an unseen ledge, tip-toed along it, with his fingers hooked in a crack, and lo! the rock-face split duly

when as a boy he lay hidden in the rambling cellars of the old wine-barn, while his co

dark down there in the cleft, but once he caught a glimpse of blue sky high above him, and again the fragrance of a sprig of thyme was borne to his nost

with his arm under her mantilla, looking out at the wine-red hills

ing he most loves, and they had gone in together quickly ere the mosquitoes had time

her fact he had ascertained. Above he saw the blue sky, deep blue as th

the "Lads of the Squadron" would be very hot and eager on the chase, after one of them had tasted El Sarria's bullet in his thigh. He would have a short shrift and no trial at all if he fell into their hands. For in those

e arroyo beneath him, brick-red and hot, a valley of dry bones crossed here and there by rambling g

across the heavens, let his shadow sail slowly across the

wait-none knows of this place. Here I am secure

ed, stretching his fingers out to the sun and drawing them in, as a t

t it w

safety, Ramon stole onward. He was in the jaws now. He was out. He rushed swiftly for the first huge b

x men sprang after him, and as many mo

red duros to the man wh

nesslike sword bayonets dance about him like flames. The uniforms mixed

his gun. He could run better without it. They were too many for that, and it was not needed.

e knew. This time his knife made no mistake. For assuredly no enemy, bu

way unscathed, and the desolate wilderness of Montblanch swallowed him up. Yet no wilderness was like this man's hear

d now neither w