Rollo and El Sarria were carrying their scanty provend to a house where a decent-looking woman had agreed to cook it for them, when their gloomy reveries were interrupted by a sudden apparition which burst upon them as they stood on the crest of a deep hollow.
The limestone hills had been rent asunder at the place, and from the bare faces of the rocks the neighbouring farmers and villagers had quarried and carried away such of the overhanging blocks as could easily be trimmed to suit their purposes.
Part of what remained had been shaped into a hornito, or stone oven, under which a fire had been kindled, and a strange figure moved about, stirring the glowing charcoal with a long bar of iron. On a smaller hearth nearer at hand a second fire blazed, and the smell of fragrant cookery rose to the expectant and envious nostrils of the four.
It was Sergeant Cardono, who moved about whistling softly, now attending to the steaming olla, now watching the rising bread in the hornito.
Perceiving Rollo, he saluted gravely and remarked, "Dinner will be served in half an hour." The others, as before, he simply ignored. But in deference to his new commander he stopped whistling and moved about with his lean shoulders squared as if on parade.
When the bread and the skinny chicken were placed in his hands, he glanced at them with somewhat of superciliousness.
"The bread will serve for crumbs," he said, and immediately began to grate the baton-like loaf with a farrier's hoof-rasp which he used in his culinary operations. "But this," he added, as he turned over the bird, "is well stricken in years, and had better be given to the recruits. They have young teeth and have had practice upon dead artillery mules!"
So saying, he went casually to the edge of the little quarry, whistled a peculiar note and tossed the bird downward to some person unseen, who appeared from nowhere in particular for the purpose of receiving it.
When the dinner was ready Sergeant Cardono announced it to Rollo as if he had been serving a prince. And what was the young man's astonishment to find a table, covered with a decent white cloth, under the shelter of a limestone rock, spread for three, and complete even to table napkins, which the sergeant had tied into various curious shapes.
As they filed down the slope the sergeant stood at attention, but when El Sarria passed he quickly beckoned him aside with a private gesture.