Dead bodies strewed the streets, in attitudes half tragical, half ludicrous, some looking like mere bundles of old clothes, and some distorted with a stiff arm still pointing to the sky. Right in the middle of a little square the friar lay shot through the forehead, his sword beside him, and with the flag clasped tightly to his breast. His great brown eyes stared upwards, and as the soldiers passed him some of them crossed themselves, and an old sergeant spoke his epitaph: “This friar,” he said, “was not of those fit only for the Lord; he would have made a soldier, and a good one; may God have pardoned him.” Driven into the middle plaza of the town, the Intransigents fought till the last, selling their lives for more than they were worth, and dying silently. The citadel was taken with a rush, and the red flag hauled down. Bugles rang out from the other angle of the plaza; the General and his staff rode slowly forward to meet the Regiment of Pavia as it debouched into the square. Colonel Montoro halted, and then, saluting, advanced towards his chief. His General, turning to him, angrily exclaimed, “Tell me, why did you let those fellows in the tower do so much damage, when a few shots from the field guns would have soon finished them?” Montoro hesitated, and recovering his sword once more saluted as his horse fretted on the curb, snorting and sidling from the dead bodies that were strewed upon the ground. “My General,” he said, “not for all Spain and half the Indies would I have trained the cannon on the tower; it is Mudejar of the purest architecture.” His General smiled at him a little grimly, and saying, “Well, after all, this is no time to ask accounts from any man,” touched his horse with the spur and, followed by his staff, he disappeared into the town. XII A MINOR PROPHET THE city sweltered in the August heat. No breath of air lifted the pall of haze that wrapped the streets, the houses, and the dark group of Græco-Roman buildings that stands up like a rock in the dull tide-way of the brick-built tenements that compose the town. Bells pealed at intervals, summoning the fractioned faithful to their various centres of belief. When they had ceased and all the congregations were assembled listening to the exhortations of their spiritual advisers, and were employed fumbling inside their purses, as they listened, for the destined “threepenny,” that obolus which gives respectability to alms, the silence was complete. Whitey-brown paper bags, dropped overnight, just stirred occasionally as the air swelled their bellies, making them seem alive, or as alive as is a jelly-fish left stranded by the tide.