AN hour’s ride to the west of Toledo, on the road to Torrijos and Talavera, and in the immediate neighbourhood of the village of Galvez, two men sat in the shadow of a great rock, and played cards. They played quietly and without vociferation, illustrating the advantages of a minute coinage. They had gambled with varying fortune since the hour of the siesta, and a sprinkling of cigarette ends on the bare rocks around them testified to the indulgence in a kindred vice. The elder of the two men glanced from time to time over his shoulder, and down towards the dusty high road which lay across the arid plain beneath them like a tape. The country here is barren and stone-ridden, but to the west, where Torrijos gleamed whitely on the plain, the earth was green with lush corn and heavy blades of maize, now springing into ear. Where the two soldiers sat the herbage was scant and of an aromatic scent, as it mostly is in hot countries and in rocky places. That these men belonged to a mounted branch of the service was evident from their equipment, and notably from the great rusty spurs at their heels. They were clad in cotton—dusky white breeches, dusky blue tunics—a sort of undress, tempered by the vicissitudes of a long war and the laxity of discipline engendered by political trouble at home. They had left their horses in the stable of a venta, hidden among ilex trees by the roadside, and had clambered to this point of vantage above the highway, to pass the afternoon after the manner of their race. For the Spaniard will be found playing cards amid the wreck of the world and in the intervals between the stupendous events of the last day. ‘He comes,’ said the elder man at length, as he leisurely shuffled the greasy cards. ‘I hear his horse’s hoofs.’ And, indeed, the great silence which seems to brood over the uplands of Spain—the silence, as it were, of an historic past and a dead present—was broken by the distant regular beat of hoofs. The trooper who had spoken was a bullet-headed Castilian, with square jaw and close-set eyes. His companion, a younger man, merely nodded his head, and studied the cards which had just been dealt to him. The game progressed, and Concepçion Vara, on the Toledo road, approached at a steady trot. This man showed to greater advantage on horseback and beneath God’s open sky than in the streets of a city. Here, in the open and among the mountains, he held his head erect and faced the world, ready to hold his own against it. In the streets he wore a furtive air, and glanced from left to right fearing recognition. He now took his tired horse to the stable of the little venta, where, with his usual gallantry, he assisted a hideous old hag to find a place in the stalls. While uttering a gay compliment, he deftly secured for his mount a feed of corn which was much in excess of that usually provided for the money.