While toiling more leisurely up the steep, any one chancing to look in the hunchback's face would there have observed an expression indescribable. Sadness pervaded it, with an air of perplexity, as though he had met with some misfortune he could not quite comprehend. And so had he. Before leaving the spot where the stiletto was taken from him, he had sought an opportunity to step back into that shady niche in the cliff where he had lost his treasures. The _monte_ players, unsuspicious of his object, made no objection. But instead of there finding what he had expected, he saw only a pair of horse-halters: one lying coiled upon the ground, the head-stall of the other caught over the rock above, the rope end dangling down! An inexplicable phenomenon, which, however, he had kept to himself, and ever since been cudgelling his brains to account for. But soon after he had something else to think of: the time having arrived when he was called upon to give proof of his capability as a guide. Heretofore it had been all plain road riding; but now they had reached a point spoken of by himself where the _calzada_ must be forsaken. The horses, too, left behind; everything but their weapons; the path beyond being barely practicable for men afoot. Dismounting all, at a command--this time not given by the bugle--and leaving a sufficient detail to look after the animals, they commenced the ascent, their guide, seemingly more quadruped than biped, in the lead. Strung out in single file--no other formation being possible--as they wound their way up the zig-zag with the moonlight here and there, giving back the glint of their armour, it was as some great serpent--a monster of the antediluvian ages--crawling towards its prey. Silently as serpent too; not a word spoken, nor exclamation uttered along their line. For, although it might be another hour before they could reach their destination, less than a second would suffice for their voices to get there, even though but muttered. One spot their guide passed with something like a shudder. It was where he had appropriated the dagger taken from a dead body. His shuddering was not due to that, but to fear from a far different cause. The body was no longer there. Those who dwelt above must have been down and borne it away. They would now be on the alert, and at any moment he might hear the cracking of carbines--a volley; perhaps feel the avenging bullet. What if they should roll rocks down and crush him and the party behind? In any case there could be no surprisal now; and he would gladly have seen those he was guiding give up the thought of it and turn back. Santander was himself irresolute, and would willingly have done so. But Ramirez, a man of more mettle, at the point of his sword commanded the hunchback to keep on, and the cowardly colonel dare not revoke the order without eternally disgracing himself.