The quiet voice of Sor Teresa broke the silence, softly taking its place in his thoughts.  It seemed that the Sarrion brain had the power—­the secret of so much success in this world—­of thrusting forth a sure and steady hand to grasp the heart of a question and tear it from the tangle of side-issues among which the majority of men and women are condemned to flounder.

“Where is Evasio Mon?” she asked.

Marcos answered with a low, contented laugh.

“He is trapped in the valley,” he said in French.  “I have seen to that.”

The firing had ceased as suddenly as it had commenced, and a silence only broken by the voice of the river, now hung over the valley.

“Are you ready?” Sor Teresa asked her driver.

“Yes, Excellency.”

“Then go.”

She may have nodded a farewell to Marcos and Juanita.  But that they could not see in the blackness of the night.  She certainly gave them no spoken salutation.  The carriage moved away at a sharp trot, leaving Marcos and Juanita alone.

“We can ride some distance and must ford the river higher up,” said Marcos at once.  He did not seem to want any explanation.  The excitement of the moment seemed to have wiped out the events of the last few months like writing off a slate.  Juanita was young again, ready to throw herself headlong into an adventure in the mountains with Marcos such as they had had together many times during the holidays.  But this was better than the dangers of mere snow and ice.  For Juanita had tasted that highest of emotions, the excitement of battle.  She had heard that which some men having once heard cannot live without, the siren song of a bullet.

“Are we going nearer to the Carlists?” she asked hurriedly.  There was fighting blood in her veins, and the tones of her voice told clearly enough that it was astir at this moment.

“Yes,” answered Marcos.  “We must pass underneath them; for the ford is there.  We must be quite noiseless.  We must not even whisper.”

He edged his horse towards one of the rough stones laid on the outer edge of the road to mark its limit at night.

“I can only give you one hand,” he said.  “Can you get up from this stone?”

“Behind you?” asked Juanita; “as we used to ride when I was—­little?”

For Marcos had, like most Spaniards, grown from boyhood to manhood in the saddle, and Juanita had no fear of horses.  She clambered to the broad back of the Moor and settled herself there, sitting pillion fashion and holding herself in position with both hands round Marcos.

“If he trots, I fall off,” she said, with an eager laugh.

They soon quitted the road and began to descend the steep slope towards the river by a narrow path only made visible by the open space in the high brushwood.  It was the way down to a ford leading to a cottage by courtesy called a farm, though the cultivated land was scarcely an acre in extent, reclaimed from the river-bed.