In the abstract this was incontestable, but El Sarria only smiled the more grimly. After all Dolores was the only woman upon whose fidelity one would be justified in wagering the last whiff of a good _cigarillo_. And as if reminded of a duty El Sarria rolled a beauty as he dragged one huge foot after another slowly up the hill in the rear of Concha, who, her love-locks straying on the breeze, her _basquina_ held coquettishly in one hand, and the prettiest toss of the head for the benefit of any whom it might concern, went leaping upwards like a young roe. All the while Rollo was sitting below quite unconscious of this treachery. His head was sunk on his hand. Deep melancholy brooded in his heart. He rocked to and fro as if in pain. Looking down from the mountain-side Ramon Garcia pitied him. "Ah, poor innocent young man," he thought, "doubtless he believes that the heart of this girl is all his own. But all men are fools--a butterfly is always a butterfly and an Andaluse an Andaluse to the day of her death!" Then turning his thoughts backward, he remembered the many who had taken their turn with mandolin and guitar at the _rejas_ of Concha's window when he and Dolores lived outside the village of Sarria; and he (ah, thrice fool!) had taken it into his thick head to be jealous. Well, after all this was none of his business, he thanked the saints. He was not responsible for the vagaries of pretty young women. He wondered vaguely whether he ought to tell Rollo. But after turning the matter this way and that, he decided against it, remembering the dire consequences of jealousy in his own case, and concluding with the sage reflection that there were plenty of mosquitoes in the world already without beating the bushes for more. But with the corner of an eye more accustomed to the sun glinting on rifle barrels than to the flashing eyes of beauty, El Sarria could make out that the Vitorian in the red _boina_ was following them, his gun over his shoulder, trying, not with conspicuous success to assume the sauntering air of a man who, having nothing better to do, goes for a stroll in the summer evening. "'Tis the first time that ever I saw a soldier off duty take his musket for a walk!" growled El Sarria, "and why on the Sierra de Moncayo does the fellow stop to trick himself out as for a _festa_?" Concha looked over her shoulder, presumably at El Sarria, though why the maiden's glances were so sprightly and her lips so provokingly pouted is a question hard enough to be propounded for the doctorial thesis at Salamanca. For Ramon Garcia was stolid as an ox of his native Aragon, and arch glances and pretty gestures were as much wasted on him as if he chewed the cud. Still he was not even in these matters so dull and unobservant as he looked, that is, when he had any reason for observing.