Without a word he slipped away from my side, and with the silence and adroitness of a trained Indian scout he vanished, leaving me a prey to deep anxiety. I watched the soldiers in the road below in a fever of suspense for any sign that they suspected his presence; but they gave none. The voices reached me in an indistinguishable murmur, broken by an occasional laugh and an oath in a louder tone. Now and then the horses moved and the accoutrements rattled and jingled; and once or twice a match was struck as some one or other of the men lighted a fresh cigarette. This suspense continued for several minutes, and presently two of the soldiers who had been away returned, and were greeted with eager questions by their comrades. Then a new fear alarmed me: that scouts would be sent up to where we lay concealed; and a confused medley of thoughts of how we should act in such a case and of the possible consequences rushed into my head, increasing my anxiety and alarm a thousandfold. It was the fear of neither capture nor death that stirred my pulses so keenly. We were strong enough, having the advantage of surprise, to more than cope with so small a party. But if the tussle came and any of the men were killed, as they were sure to be, the consequences to Sarita and myself would be incalculably compromising. If I was to have help from the Palace, I must be able to ask for it with clean hands; and if I were known to have taken part in a fight with the soldiery in which lives were lost, my hope of help would be gone. Moreover, my own feeling was one of unutterable aversion from shedding blood, or sanctioning it to be shed. Whatever excuse the Carlists might have in their own minds for violence, I had none. I was not one of them, except by the accident of this association for Sarita’s sake; and for me to raise my hand to take a man’s life in such a case would be murder and nothing short of it. Many thoughts of this kind beat themselves into my brain in the terrible minutes that followed the return of the two scouts, until I was tempted to go back to my companions and at all hazards order a retreat and find some other plan of getting to Calvarro’s farm and to Sarita. Had Andreas been by my side at the moment, I should have done it, but without him we were powerless; and to leave him behind would have been an act of treachery and cowardice as well as folly. Those minutes of suspense were wellnigh equal in intensity to a death agony. *CHAPTER XXV* *AT CALVARRO’S* The tension of suspense was broken at length. I caught sight of the figures of the second couple of scouts on their return as they crossed a patch of moonlight at a little distance, and almost at the same moment a hand was laid on my shoulder, and the lad Andreas stood at my side. He came as silently as a shadow out of the darkness.