frontier as a personal mission of the highest honour.  I was inclined to laugh at him.  He himself is a cheery and jovial person and he laughed with me quite readily—­but I got the order before dark all right.  It was rather a job, as the Alphonsists were attacking the right flank of our whole front and there was some considerable disorder there.  I mounted her on a mule and her maid on another.  We spent one night in a ruined old tower occupied by some of our infantry and got away at daybreak under the Alphonsist shells.  The maid nearly died of fright and one of the troopers with us was wounded.  To smuggle her back across the frontier was another job but it wasn’t my job.  It wouldn’t have done for her to appear in sight of French frontier posts in the company of Carlist uniforms.  She seems to have a fearless streak in her nature.  At one time as we were climbing a slope absolutely exposed to artillery fire I asked her on purpose, being provoked by the way she looked about at the scenery, ’A little emotion, eh?’ And she answered me in a low voice:  ’Oh, yes!  I am moved.  I used to run about these hills when I was little.’  And note, just then the trooper close behind us had been wounded by a shell fragment.  He was swearing awfully and fighting with his horse.  The shells were falling around us about two to the minute.

“Luckily the Alphonsist shells are not much better than our own.  But women are funny.  I was afraid the maid would jump down and clear out amongst the rocks, in which case we should have had to dismount and catch her.  But she didn’t do that; she sat perfectly still on her mule and shrieked.  Just simply shrieked.  Ultimately we came to a curiously shaped rock at the end of a short wooded valley.  It was very still there and the sunshine was brilliant.  I said to Dona Rita:  ’We will have to part in a few minutes.  I understand that my mission ends at this rock.’  And she said:  ’I know this rock well.  This is my country.’

“Then she thanked me for bringing her there and presently three peasants appeared, waiting for us, two youths and one shaven old man, with a thin nose like a sword blade and perfectly round eyes, a character well known to the whole Carlist army.  The two youths stopped under the trees at a distance, but the old fellow came quite close up and gazed at her, screwing up his eyes as if looking at the sun.  Then he raised his arm very slowly and took his red boina off his bald head.  I watched her smiling at him all the time.  I daresay she knew him as well as she knew the old rock.  Very old rock.  The rock of ages—­and the aged man—­landmarks of her youth.  Then the mules started walking smartly forward, with the three peasants striding alongside of them, and vanished between the trees.  These fellows were most likely sent out by her uncle the Cura.

“It was a peaceful scene, the morning light, the bit of open country framed in steep stony slopes, a high peak or two in the distance, the thin smoke of some invisible caserios, rising straight up here and there.  Far away behind us the guns had ceased and the echoes in the gorges had died out.  I never knew what peace meant before. . .