In another southern province far enough from the village of Sarria, there is a white house with sentinels before it. They do not slouch as they walk nor lean bent-backed against a pillar when nobody is looking, as is the wont of Spanish sentries elsewhere. It is the house of the Governor of the once turbulent province of Valencia. The Governor is one General Blair, Duke of Castellon del Mar, and twice-hatted grandee of Spain, but he is still known from Murcia even to Tarragona as "Don Rollo." For he has cleared the southern countries of Carlists, put down the Red Republicans of Valencia and Cartagena with jovial good humour, breaking their heads affectionately with his stout oak staff when they rioted. They had grown accustomed to being shot in batches, and rather resented the change at first, as reflecting on their seriousness. However, they have since come to understand the firebrand General and to like him. Usually they favour him with a private message a day or two before they intend to make a revolution. Whereupon Rollo goes himself into the woods and cuts himself a new stick of satisfactory proportions. In this manner he has survived an abdication, two dictatorships, and a restoration with undiminished credit, chiefly by holding his province easily and asking from Madrid neither reinforcements of soldiers nor of money. His wife is not receiving to-day, but in English fashion there are a few friends who drop in for dinner, _habitues_ of the house, beloved comrades of Don Rollo's with whom (for the Senora is the old Concha still) his wife flirts a little, chats a great deal, and gives the best advice in return for boundless admiration and delight in her beauty and wit. "Dolores," she says to a friend who has arrived and sits patiently folding her little hands on a sofa, "it was pretty of you to come in such a lovely gown--just to please those poor old bachelors. Here, Etienne, hold the baby, and be sure not to drop him, sir. There--what did I tell you? You have made him cry! Monster! Well, he shall be sent away, sweetest pet, that he shall! He is a buffalo of the _marisma_, a tiger of the jungle, an ogre out of a story book--that he is, sweetest! There, La Giralda, take the darling away! Oh, and give him--but stay--I too will come, else the little villain may howl till midnight." She continues to talk quickly as she goes toward the door. "What a voice--just like his father's when he is in the place of arms and the men do not please him! There--sweetest" (she goes behind the curtain), "there----!" And, contented, the young man stills that parade voice of his into gentle murmurings like those of a bee within the bell of a flower. Presently a tall young man comes striding in, in a plain uniform with the starred shoulder-straps of the highest rank. Behind him is a broad-chested, deep-bearded veteran, his chest blazing with decorations.