Marcos' face was gray beneath the sunburn. His eyes were bloodshot and his lips were pressed upward in a line of deadly resolution. It was the face of a man who had seen something that he would never forget. He looked at his father. "Evasio Mon," he said. "Killed?" Marcos nodded his head. "You did not do it?" said Sarrion sharply. "No. They found him among the Carlists, There were five or six priests. It was Zeneta--wounded himself--who recognised him and told me. He was not dead when Zeneta found him--and he spoke. 'Always the losing game,' he said. Then he smiled--and died." Sarrion turned and led the way slowly back again towards the house. Juanita seemed to have forgotten her intention of going to the valley to offer help to the nursing-sisters who lived in the village. Marcos' horse, the Moor, was shaking and dragged on the bridle which he had slipped over his arm. He jerked angrily at the reins, looking back with a little exclamation of impatience. Juanita took the bridle from his arm and led the horse which followed her quietly enough. She said nothing and asked no questions. But she was watching Marcos' face--wondering, perhaps, if it would ever soften again. Sarrion was the first to speak. "Poor Mon," he said, half addressing Juanita. "He was never a fortunate man. He took the wrong turning years ago. He abandoned the Church in order to ask a woman to marry him. But she had scruples. She thought, or she was made to think, that her duty lay in another direction. And Mon's life ... well ...!" He shrugged his shoulders. "I know," said Juanita quietly ... "all about it." CHAPTER XXX THE CASTING VOTE There is in one corner of the little churchyard of Torre Garda a square mound which marks the burial-place, in one grave, of four hundred Carlists. The Wolf, it is said, carried as many more to the sea. General Pacheco completed his teaching at the mouth of the valley where the Carlists had left in a position (impregnable from the front) a strong detachment to withstand the advance of any reinforcements that might be sent from Pampeluna to the relief of Captain Zeneta and his handful of men. These were taken in the rear by the force under General Pacheco himself and annihilated. This is, however, a matter of history as is also the reputation of Pacheco. "A great general--a brute," they say of him in Spain to this day. By sunset all was quiet again at Torre Garda. The troops quitted the village as unobtrusively as they had come. They had lost but few men and half a dozen wounded were left behind in the village. The remainder were moved to Pampeluna. The Carlist list of wounded was astonishingly small. General Pacheco had the reputation of moving quickly. He was rarely hampered by his ambulance and never by the enemy's wounded. He was a great general. Cousin Peligros did not appear at dinner. She had an attack of nerves instead.