"My brother is--in the mountains. You seem good and kind, stranger; you tell me you are not a Frenchman, but a German. Oh! if you meet my brother in fight, do not kill him--spare him for my sake!" "But, dear Manuela, how am I to know your brother? One Carlist is so like another." "No, no! you are sure to know him: he resembles me, and he wears upon his breast a silver cross like mine. The same words are written upon it, and not a bullet has touched him since he has worn it." "So, your brother is a soldier of Don Carlos, your sister dwells in a Carlist village, and your parents--at least your father, judging from his looks when I spoke of the Constitution,--also hold for the Pretender. Do you not fear Christino troops?" "No, Señor--at least I should not, if they were all as good as you, who protected me from that rude Italian.--_Dios!_" she exclaimed, suddenly interrupting herself, and springing from her chair like a scared deer. From under the bench on the other side of the fire peered forth the dark countenance of a Piedmontese soldier, his checks flushed with wine, his eyes sparkling with a sullen fire, his ignoble, satyr-like features expressing a host of evil passions. He shot a venomous glance from under his dirty eyelashes, then turned himself round, grinding between his teeth an Italian malediction. He still lay where I had violently thrown him, when, upon our first entrance, I rescued Manuela from his brutality. "To bed, girl!" screamed the old woman, who just then re-entered the kitchen. Manuela went to bed, and I composed myself to sleep upon the bench by the fire. It was eleven o'clock, and the silence in the village was unbroken save by the howling of the storm and the occasional challenge of a sentry. IN THE MOUNTAINS. The road from Pampeluna to France passes by a mountain of some size, whose real name I have forgotten, but which our soldiers called the Hill of Death, because, for a league around, it emitted an odour of unburied corpses. Close to the road, but at a considerable elevation, a conical peak springs from the hill-side.