"You have slept three hours," replied Marcos in that hushed voice in which it seems natural to speak before the dawn. "I am making coffee--come when you are ready." Juanita found a pail of water and a piece of last year's yellow soap which had been carefully scraped clean with a knife. A clean towel had also been provided. Juanita noted the manly simplicity of these attentions with a little tender and wise smile. "I know what it is that makes men gipsies," she said, when she joined Marcos who was attending to a fire of sticks on the ground at the cottage door. "I shall always have a kindly feeling for them now. They get something straight from heaven which is never known to people who sleep in stuffy houses and get up to wash in warm water." She gave a little shiver at the recollection of her ablutions, and laughed a clear, low laugh, as fresh as the morning itself. "Where are the men?" she asked. "One has gone to Pampeluna, one has taken a note to the officer commanding the reinforcements sent for by Zeneta. The third has gone down to fetch his mother up here to bake bread all day. There will be a little army here to-night." Juanita stood watching Marcos who seemed entirely absorbed in blowing up the fire with a pair of dilapidated bellows. "I suppose," she said lightly, "that it was of these things that you were thinking when you were so silent as we climbed up here last night." "I suppose so," answered Marcos. Juanita looked at him with a little frown as if she did not quite believe him. The day had now come and a pink light suffused the topmost peaks. A faint warmth spread itself like a caress across the valley and turned the cold air into a pearly mist. "Of what are you thinking?" asked Marcos suddenly; for Juanita had stood motionless, watching him. "I was thinking what a comfort it is that you are not an indoor man," she replied with a careless laugh. The peasants had brought their cows to the high pastures. So there was plenty of milk in the cottage which was little more than a dairy; for it had no furniture beyond a few straw mattresses thrown on the floor in one corner. Marcos served breakfast. "Pedro particularly told me to see that you had the cup which has a handle," he said, pouring the coffee from a battered coffee-pot. During their simple breakfast they were silent. There was a subtle constraint. Juanita who had a quick and direct mind, decided that the moment had come for that explanation for which Marcos did not ask. An explanation does not improve by keeping. They were alone here--alone in the world it seemed--for the cows had strayed away. The dogs had gone to the valley with their masters. She and Marcos had always known each other. She knew his every thought; she was not afraid of him; she never had been. Why should she be now? "Marcos," she said. "Yes." "I want you to give me the letter I wrote to you at Torre Garda."