In his cave of limestone Ramon was going over the scene in his own mind. That is why he licked his lips slowly and smiled. A tiger does that when after a full meal he moves the loose skin over his neck twitchy-ways and yawns with over-fed content. And Ramon, even though hunted, did the same. When he married little Dolores, Ramon Garcia had not dreamed that so many things would happen. He was a rich man as men go; had his house, his garden, his vines, a quintaine of olive-trees, was accounted quite a match by old Manuela, the village go-between, the priest's housekeeper, in whose hands were the hearts of many maids. These things he, Don Ramon Garcia, had possessed (he was called Don then) and now--he had his knife and the long, well-balanced gun which was placed across the rests in the dryest part of the cavern. * * * * * He remembered the day well. He had been from home, down by Porta in the Cerdagne, to buy cattle, and returning home more swiftly than he had expected, his cattle following after in the herdsman's care, the thought of pretty Dolores making his horse's feet go quicker, a song upon his lips, he had approached the village of Sarria de la Plana, and the home that was his own--and hers. A swift-falling Spanish twilight it was, he remembered, the sky, broadly banded of orange and rose, was seen behind the highly piled houses. From the whiteness of the long frontage, dots and flecks flashed out. Black oblongs of glassless window-space splashed the white. Here and there a hint of vivid colour flung itself out almost defiantly--a woman's red petticoat drying on a cord, the green slats of a well-to-do window-blind. There came to the ears of Ramon Garcia the click of castanets from the semi-dark of wide-arched doors, and the soft tink-a-tank of lightly thrummed guitars. He saw a lover or two "eating iron," his hands clasping the bars behind which was the listening ear of his mistress. And throughout this village were peace and well-accustomed pleasance. Ramon smiled. It was his home. But not as he smiled up among the rocks of the Montblanch on the borderlands betwixt Aragon and Catalunia. He smiled well-pleased and minded him upon the nights not so long gone by, when he too had "eaten iron," and clung a-tip-toe to the window-bars of little Dolores, who lent him such a shy attention, scuttling off like a mouse at the least stirring within the house where all her kinsfolk slept. There was none like her, his little Dolores! God had given her to a rough old fellow like him, one who had endured the trampling of the threshing floor as the car oxen drave round.