This silent Spaniard might, perhaps, have made for himself a name in the world’s arena in other days; for he had a spark of that genius which creates a leader.  But fate had ruled that he should have no wider sphere than an obscure Pyrenean gorge, no greater a following than the men of the Valley of the Wolf.  These he held in an iron grip.  Within his deep and narrow head lay the secret which neither Madrid nor Bayonne could ever understand; why the Valley of the Wolf was neither Royalist nor Carlist.  The quiet, slow eyes had alone seen into the hearts of the wild Navarrese mountaineers and knew the way to rule them.

It may be thought that their small number made the task an easy one.  But it must also be remembered that these mountain slopes have given to the world the finest guerilla soldiers that history has known, and are peopled by one of the untamed races of mankind.

Moreover, Marcos de Sarrion was a restful man.  And those few who see below the surface, know that the restful man is he whose life’s task is well within the compass of his ability.

Perro, it seemed, with an intelligence developed at the best and hardest of all schools, where hunger is the usher, awaited, not word, but action from his master; and had not long to wait.

For Marcos rose and slowly climbed the hill towards Torre Garda, half hidden amid the pine trees on the mountain crest above him.  There was a midnight train, he knew, from Pampeluna to Saragossa.  The railway station was only twenty miles away, which is to this day considered quite a convenient distance in Navarre.  There would be a moon soon after nightfall.  There was plenty of time.  That far-off ancestress of the middle-ages had, it would appear, handed down to her sons forever, with the clear cut profile, the philosophy which allows itself time to get through life unruffled.

The Count de Sarrion was taking his early coffee the next morning at the open window in Saragossa when Marcos, with the dust of travel across the Alkali desert still upon him, came into the room.

“I expected you,” said the father.  “You will like a bath.  All is ready in your room.  I have seen to it myself.  When you are ready come back here and take your coffee.”

His attitude was almost that of a host.  For Marcos rarely came to Saragossa.  Although there was a striking resemblance of feature between the Sarrions, the father was taller, slighter and quicker in his glance, while Marcos’ face seemed to bespeak a greater strength.  In any common purpose it would assuredly fall to Marcos’ lot to execute that which his father had conceived.  The older man’s presence suggested the Court, while Marcos was clearly intended for the Camp.

The Count de Sarrion had passed through both and had emerged half cynical, half indifferent from the slough of an evil woman’s downfall.

“You would have made a good soldier,” he said to Marcos, when his son at last came home to Torre Garda with an education completed in England and France.  “But there is no opening for an honest man in the Spanish Army.  Honesty is in the gutter in Spain to-day.”