"Er--what have you brought to eat?" asked the preadamite in a quavering voice.
"Nothing to be sure. What is a fonda for?"
"Ah, then how can la señora mía get you supper? Over the way is the butcher, beyond, the green-grocer, further still the panadero--"
I returned some time later with meat, bread, potatoes, garbanzos, and a variety of vegetables, supplied with which the señora duly prepared me a supper--by sitting tight in her chair and issuing a volley of commands to the girl and the old man. For this service she demanded two "fat dogs," and collected at the same time an equal amount for my lodging.
When I had eaten, the mistress of the house mumbled a word to the dotard. He lighted with trembling hand a sort of miner's lamp and led the way downward into the subterranean stable and for what seemed little short of a half-mile through great stone vaults musty with time, close by the cruppers of an army of mules and burros. Opening at last a door some three feet square and as many above the floor, he motioned to me to climb through it into a bin filled with chaff. This was to all appearances clean, yet I hesitated. For in these endless vaults, to which the outer air seemed not to have penetrated for a century, it was cold as a November evening. I glanced at the old man in protest. He blinked back at me, shook his ever-quaking head a bit more forcibly, and turning, shuffled away through the resounding cavern, the torch casting at first weird, dancing shadows behind his wavering legs, then gradually dying out entirely. I stood in blackest darkness, undecided. Before, however, the last faint sound of his going had wholly passed away, the scrape of the veteran's faltering feet grew louder again and in another moment he reappeared, clutching under one thin arm a heavy blanket. When I had taken it, he put a finger to his lips, cast his sunken eyes about him, whispered "sh!" with a labored wink, and tottered once more away. I climbed into the bin and slept soundly until the cursing of arrieros harnessing their mules aroused me shortly before dawn.
CHAPTER IX
THE TRAIL OF THE PRIEST
The people of Tembleque had been just certain enough that none but an arriero could follow the intricate route thither, and that no man could cover the distance on foot in one day, to cause me to awaken determined to leave the Madrid highway and strike cross-country to Toledo. The first stage of the journey was the road to the village of Mora, which I was long in finding because at its entrance to--which chanced also to be its exit from--Tembleque it split up like an unraveled shoe-string. I got beyond the loose ends at last, however, and set a sharp pace--even though the hole in my shoe had enlarged to the size of a peseta--across a scarred and weather-beaten landscape that seemed constantly reminding how aged is the world.
Twenty-four kilometers brought me to Mora, a sturdy town of countrymen, in time for an early and stinted dinner and inquiries which led me off in a new direction up a steadily mounting region to Mascargne. There, at a still different point of the compass, a ruined castle on a hilltop ten kilometers away was pointed out to me as the landmark of El Monacail; to which village a rugged and sterile road clambered over a country hunch-backed with hills. It was siesta-time when I arrived, the sun scorching hot, a burning wind sweeping among the patched and misshapen hovels that made up the place. There were no inhabitants abroad, which argued their good sense; but in the shadow of the only public building a trio of soldiers were playing at cards. They leered at me for some time when I made inquiry, then burst out in derisive laughter.
"Claro, hombre!" answered one of them sarcastically. "You can walk to Toledo la Santa if you know enough to follow a cow-path."