“I will order a horse at once.  It is all very mysterious and extraordinary; but then you have been a mystery, Rupert Hyde, a riddle and a puzzle, ever since I have known you.”

“It will all be unravelled some day, colonel, never fear; but lose no time, let me beg;” and, thus adjured, the colonel presently mounted his horse and galloped over to headquarters.

He arrived there the day after McKay’s excursion into the Russian lines.  The young staff-officer was still absent, and fears were already entertained as to his safety, although it was not positively known as yet that he had come to harm.

Let us leave Colonel Blythe and other friends exchanging anxious conjectures as to McKay’s fate and return to Mariquita, whose misgivings had steadily increased from the day she had last seen Hyde.

He had promised she should see him again, and, perhaps, Stanislas, without delay.  Yet this was more than a week since.  What had become of the old soldier?  Had he fulfilled his mission of warning, or had he been involved in the dire intrigues that threatened her lover?

Her lover, too; her Stanislas—­to save whom she had come so far, braving so many dangers, and at the peril of her maidenly self-respect—­had anything happened to him?

The terrible uncertainty was crushing her.  She must know something, even the worst, or her apprehensions, ever present and hourly increasing, would kill her.

To whom could she turn in this time of cruel suspense?  Hyde had deserted her, seemingly; in spite of her heartfelt anxiety she could not bring herself to approach McKay.

One other man there was; that villain, Benito Villegas—­the source, in truth, of all her trouble—­might give her news.  Bad news, possibly, but still news, if only she could lay hands on him.  Where and how was he hiding?  Every effort to find him had been fruitless hitherto.

At Valetta Joe’s they knew no such name, so they told her when she inquired cautiously for Benito from some of the loafers hanging about the shop.

Yet that was the place to which he was to proceed on arrival.  The letter she had picked up in Bombardier Lane said so.  He must be hiding, or in disguise; and now, when her anxiety for her beloved Stanislas was at its highest pitch, she was more than ever resolved to find out somehow what Benito was doing.

One afternoon, when business was rather slack at Mother Charcoal’s, she seized a chance of visiting the hut-town.

“Any work?” she asked, in Spanish, of Valetta Joe himself, whom she met at the door of his shanty.

“What can you do?  Where do you come from?  Spain?” replied the baker in the same tongue.

“Yes, from Malaga.  I can do anything—­try me.”

“Can you sell bread through the camp?  I am a man short, and could take you on, perhaps, until he is better.  Come down below, and I will give you a basketful to hawk about.”