At noon, next day, two men--a priest and a young peasant--were climbing the mountain-path leading to the hut. The young man carried on his shoulder a two-year-old child; and, because the sun shone and the crisp air put a spirit of life into all things untroubled by thought, the child crowed and tugged gleefully at his father's _berret_. But his father paid no heed, and strode forward at a pace which forced the priest (who was stout) now and again into a run. "She will not be there," he kept repeating, steeling himself against the worst. "She cannot be there. When she missed her child----" "She is waiting on her grandfather, belike," urged the priest. "They left him with one day's food: so she told the Brothers. And they, like fools, let her go with just sufficient for her own needs. Yet I ought not to blame them for losing their heads in so small a matter. They saved many women." He told again how he--the parish priest of Nogales--had found Gil the Younger and his wife dead and drunken, with their heads in a gutter and the child wailing in the mud beside them. "Your wife had given her mother the child to guard but a minute before she fell in with the soldiers. A young officer saved her, the Brothers said." "Mercedes will have sought her child first," persisted Sebastian; and rounding the corner of the cliff, they came in sight of the hut and of her whom they sought. She sat in the path before it, still with the fowling-piece across her knees. But to reach her they had to pass the body of a soldier lying with clenched hands in a crimson patch of snow. The child, who had passed by many horrors on the road, and all with gay unconcern, stretched out his arms across this one, recognising his mother at once, and kicking in his father's clasp. She raised her eyes dully. She was too weak even to move. "I knew you would come," she said in a whisper; and with that her eyes shifted and settled on the body in the path. "Take him away! I--I did not kill him." Her husband set down the child. "Run indoors, little one: you shall kiss mamma presently." He bent over her, and, unstringing a small wine-skin from his belt, held the mouth of it to her lips. The priest stooped over the dead man, on whose collar the figures "28" twinkled in the sunlight. The child, for a moment rebellious, toddled towards the doorway of the hut. Mercedes' eyelids had closed: but some of the wine found its way down her throat, and as it revived her, they flickered again. "Sebastian," she whispered. "Be at rest, dear wife. It is I, Sebastian." "I did not kill him." "I hear. You did not kill him." "The child?" "He is safe--safe and sound," he assured her, and called, "Sebastianillo!" For a moment there was no answer: but as he lifted Mercedes and carried her into the hut, on its threshold the boy met them, his both hands dropping silver dollars. THE LAMP AND THE GUITAR