“No,” said the man. “None between here and Arucas. The señores are—”
“Friends of liberty!” and Harper grinned as he straightened himself and turned to Appleby. “Hadn’t you better tell him the question is where can two patriots get anything to eat?”
The man glanced at their haggard faces and torn garments, which were white with dust and clammy with dew.
“Ave Maria!” he said softly, and taking a small loaf from the basket broke it into two pieces. One he held out with a bottle of thin red wine, while he glanced at the other half of the loaf deprecatingly.
“One must eat to work,” he said, as if in explanation. “There is always work for the poor, and between the troops and the Sin Verguenza they have very little else here.”
A flush crept into Appleby’s forehead, and Harper pulled out a few pesetas, which was all he had, but the man shook his head.
“No, señor,” he said. “It is for the charity, and one cannot have the liberty for nothing. Still, there are many contributions one must make, and I cannot do more.”
Appleby, who understood the significance charity has in Spain, took the provisions and lifted his battered hat as the man turned away; but when he had taken a pace or two he came back again and dropped a little bundle of maize-husk cigarettes and a strip of cardboard matches beside them. Then, without a word, he plodded away down a little path while Harper looked at Appleby with wonder in his eyes.
“I guess there are men like him in every nation, though they’re often quite hard to find,” he said. “More style about him than a good many of our senators have at home. Well, we’ll have breakfast now, and then get on again.”
They ate the half loaf and drank the wine; but Harper looked grave when Appleby took off his shoe. His foot seemed badly swollen, but he desisted from an attempt to remove the torn and clotted stocking with a wry smile, and put on the shoe again. Then he limped out into the road and plodded painfully down it under the scorching sun all that morning without plan or purpose, though he knew that while it lay not far from Santa Marta the Insurgents had friends and sympathizers in the aldea of Arucas, which was somewhere in front of them. They met nobody. The road wound away before them empty as well as intolerably hot and dusty, though here and there a group of men at work in the fields stopped and stared at them; and they spent an hour making what Harper called a traverse round a white aldea they were not sure about. Then they lay down awhile in a ruined garden beside the carretera.