Twenty minutes later the Sin Verguenza went stumbling down the tram‐line file by file, and when they swung out into the carretera Tony Palliser marched with the leading four at the head of one company. The night was still and dark and the tramp of feet alone rang through the silence of the dusky cane, for the Sin Verguenza knew there was grim work before them, and marched with portentous quietness. Their time had come, but they realized with an unpleasant distinctness that if they failed very few of them would escape the vengeance of Morales. XXX — MORALES PRESERVES HIS FAME THERE was a pale shining in the eastern sky when the Sin Verguenza came into sight of Santa Marta. The town lay, a smear of deeper shadow, upon the dusky levels in front of them, but the transition from darkness to light is swift in that country, and here and there a flat roof higher than those it stood among grew out of the obscurity into definite form. Save for the rhythmic beat of marching feet, there was stillness among the cane, and nothing moved on all the dim levels but the long black column that crawled down the shadowy road. Then the distant peaks stood out in sharper contour against the paling blueness of the western sky, and Tony, marching outside man of one four, glanced over his shoulder. He could dimly see the lines of men behind him plodding through the dust, and their sloped rifles led his gaze aloft. The sky was now shining with a pearly lustre like the inside of a shell, and low down upon a cane the flush of crimson blazed into brilliancy. The rifles of the rearguard cut against it as they rose and fell, and the faces of the men behind him became suddenly distinguishable. He could also make out Appleby swinging along a few paces away an his right hand. Then he glanced in front of him, and saw that the great peaks were now flushed with a warm pink, until the dust rolled thicker and blotted out everything. It thinned as they swung through a white aldea, and the light which had swept down the hillsides touched Santa Marta when they came out again, so that the city shone immaculately white upon a setting of luminescent green. He gazed at it in wonder, for the long night march through a silent land, the thrill of excitement, and the unwonted bracing of his nerves to face a physical peril had not been without their effect on him. Tony was usually somewhat materialistic but just then the bodily part of him was under the domination of the spirit, and he was sensible of a curious exaltation Turning his head he glanced at Appleby with a little laugh. “It is beautiful!” he said. “It came upon one so suddenly out of the night that one could almost fancy it a vision—of the everlasting city.” “The one upon the Tiber?” said Appleby. “The one seen in Patmos nearly two thousand years ago.”