“But this season,” laughed the lord again, “we shall not take more than a farm, nor raid more than an orchard, nor carry much home beyond a few apples, and a little wheat perhaps from the first plough lands of the infidels in the plain.” By this time it was full day. There was a new warmth in the air, and the noise of the torrent seemed louder under the growing light. The torrent, roaring southward, seemed, with its adventure and its plunge, a sort of leader; and these mounted men, now gathering into column for the raid, thought of the south and of the stony path that led along its banks on, away, over the ford to Jaca: and thence to the plains and the battle. The torrent of Aragon is a maker of kingdoms and of soldiers destined to conquer. Though as yet these Christians had but a few bare parishes of land, hardly held by day and by night with arms, and the little town of Jaca only for their bastion, yet in them all, whether doubters or visionaries, there lay smouldering some certitude of future things, and a promise of the reconquest of Spain beyond and of the freeing of all Christian land. So they rode out, in number about four hundred and fifty mounted men, with many more afoot that made a straggling herd about them and behind them. So they filed out by the southern gate. The priests and the women watched them as they went by, and so did the children in the crowd. There were shrill cries of prophecy and of warning. To the last of them that rode by a deacon held up the relic of St. Lawrence, which was a piece of cloth from his tunic. The armed man bent over the saddle on the near side and kissed it as he passed. Their marching raised a cloud of dust that blew softly away to the southward under the summer air, and in a little while the noise of the horses’ hoofs was lost, and the little place was quiet again. There was a woman, one of those that had ridden in with the mules. She stood now by the fountain filling a leathern gourd with water and crooning a song of the Basques. For she was of the Basque country, to the east, an unconquered tribe. And with her was her little son, four years old, who held her skirts and watched the cool, clear water running into the gourd. “Mother,” he said, “where do all those tall gentlemen go?” “They go to fight against the men in white cloaks,” she said, “the men who serve Mahound. They go to catch them in their camps, and to bring us home good things--as it says in the song that we sing on winter evenings,” and she crooned the tune to him. The little child said, “Mother, what is Mahound?” “Mahound,” said the woman, “is a great beast that lives in an island of the sea. He has a head like a goat, and great shining eyes.” The child looked at her, glorying and delighting to hear the story again. “And are not his eyes jewels?” he said.