Manuel Blanco turned the corner and Benton slipped quickly down from his perch on the wall and fell into step as the other passed.
"It is difficult to learn anything, Señor." The Spaniard spoke low as he led the way outward from the city.
"Puntal is usually a quiet place and the festivities have made it like a child at a fiesta. One hears only 'Long live the King—the Queen!' There are to be illuminations to-night, and music, and the limit will be taken off the roulette wheels at the Strangers' Club. Bah! One could have read it in the papers without leaving Cadiz."
"Then you have learned nothing?"
"One thing, yes. An old friend of mine has come for the festivities from the Duke's estate. He says the pass is picketed and a guard is posted at the Look-out Rock."
"The Look-out Rock?" Benton repeated the words with an inflection of inquiry.
"Yes—look above you at the hill whose summit is less high than the ridge peaks—there below the snow." Blanco suddenly raised his voice from confidential undertone to the sing-song of the professional guide. "Yonder," he said, scarcely changing the direction of his pointed finger, "is the unfinished sanatorium for consumptives which the Germans undertook and left unfinished." Two soldiers were sauntering by, smart in newly issued uniforms of tall red caps, dark tunics, sky-blue breeches, and polished boots. "That point," went on Blanco, dropping his voice again, as they passed out of earshot, "is three thousand, five hundred feet above the sea. From the rock by the pines—if you had a strong glass, you could see the Galavian flag which flies there—the eye sweeps the sea for many empty leagues. One's gaze can also follow the gorge where runs the pass through the mountains. Also, to the other side, one has an eagle's glimpse of the Grand Duke's hunting lodge. There is an observatory just back of the rock and flag. The speck of light which you can see, like a splinter of crystal, is its dome, but only military astronomers now look through its telescope. There one can read the tale of open shutters or barred windows in the house of Louis, the Dreamer. You understand?"
"Yes."
"Now, do you see the thread of broken masonry zig-zagging upward from the Palace? That is a walled drive which runs part of the way up to the rock. In other days the Kings of Galavia went thus from their castle to the point whence they could see the peninsula spread out below like a map on the page of a school-book."
"Yes? What else?"