Clinging steeply to higher levels and leaning on buttressing walls, lay outspread vineyards and cane fields and gardens.  Splotching the whole with imperial and gorgeous purple, hung masses of bougonvillea between trellis and masonry.  At a more lofty line, where the sub-tropical profusion halted in the warning breath of a keener atmosphere, came the scrub growth and beyond that, in succeeding altitudes, the pine belt, the snow line and the film of trailing cloud on the white peaks.

Out of the center of the color-splashed town rose the square tower of the ancient cathedral, white in a coat of plaster for two-thirds of its height, but gray at its top in the nakedness of mossy stone.

To its dilapidated clock Benton’s eyes traveled repeatedly and anxiously while he waited.

From the clock they wandered in turn to the road circling the bay, and the cliff at his left, where the jail-like walls of the King’s Palace rose sheer from the rock, fifty feet above him.

From the direction of the Cathedral drifted fragments of band music, and the bugle calls of marching platoons.  Everywhere festivity reigned, working great profits to the keepers of the wine-shops.

Manuel Blanco turned the corner and Benton slipped quickly down from his perch on the wall and fell into step as the other passed.

“It is difficult to learn anything, Senor.”  The Spaniard spoke low as he led the way outward from the city.

“Puntal is usually a quiet place and the festivities have made it like a child at a fiesta.  One hears only ‘Long live the King—­the Queen!’ There are to be illuminations to-night, and music, and the limit will be taken off the roulette wheels at the Strangers’ Club.  Bah!  One could have read it in the papers without leaving Cadiz.”

“Then you have learned nothing?”

“One thing, yes.  An old friend of mine has come for the festivities from the Duke’s estate.  He says the pass is picketed and a guard is posted at the Look-out Rock.”

“The Look-out Rock?” Benton repeated the words with an inflection of inquiry.

“Yes—­look above you at the hill whose summit is less high than the ridge peaks—­there below the snow.”  Blanco suddenly raised his voice from confidential undertone to the sing-song of the professional guide.  “Yonder,” he said, scarcely changing the direction of his pointed finger, “is the unfinished sanatorium for consumptives which the Germans undertook and left unfinished.”  Two soldiers were sauntering by, smart in newly issued uniforms of tall red caps, dark tunics, sky-blue breeches, and polished boots.  “That point,” went on Blanco, dropping his voice again, as they passed out of earshot, “is three thousand, five hundred feet above the sea.  From the rock by the pines—­if you had a strong glass, you could see the Galavian flag which flies there—­the eye sweeps the sea for many empty leagues.  One’s gaze can also follow the gorge where runs the pass