"Ah, yes, Don Luis," he thought grimly, "here is one who has a message to leave at the mill-house of Sarria."
But before setting out Ramon Garcia went into the little fagot-house, and sitting down upon a pile of kindling-wood which he himself had cut, he drew the charges of his pistols and reloaded them with quite extraordinary care.
Then he blew out his lantern and stepped forth into the night.
At the venta the three adventurers supped by themselves. Their Gallegan retainer did not put in an appearance, to the sorrow of Mons. Etienne who wished to employ him in finding out the abiding-place of the faithless but indubitably charming Doña Concha.
However, the Gallegan did not return all night. He had, in fact, gone to deliver a message at the house of his sometime friend Don Luis Fernandez.
When he arrived at the bottom of the valley through which the waters of the Cerde had almost ceased to flow, being so drained for irrigation and bled for village fountains that there remained hardly enough of them to be blued by the washerwomen at their clothes, or for the drink of the brown goats pattering down to the stray pools, their hard little hoofs clicking like castanets on the hot and slippery stones of the river-bed. Meanwhile El Sarria thought several things.
First, that Luis Fernandez had recovered from his wound and was so sure of his own security that he could afford to take over his friend's wife and all her responsibilities. Ramon gritted his teeth, as he stole like a shadow down the dry river-bed. He had learned many a lesson during these months, and the kite's shadow flitted not more silently over the un-peopled moor than did El Sarria the outlaw down to the old mill-house. He knew the place, too, stone by stone, pool by pool, for in old days Luis and he had often played there from dawn to dark.
The mill-house of Sarria was in particularly sharp contrast to the abode he had left. Luis had always been a rich man, especially since his uncle died; he, Ramon, never more than well-to-do. But here were magazines and granaries, barns and drying-lofts. Besides, in the pleasant angle where the windows looked down on the river, there was a dwelling-house with green window-shutters and white curtains, the like of which for whiteness and greenness were not to be seen even within the magnificent courtyard of Señor de Flores, the rich alcalde of Sarria.
This was illuminated as Ramon came near, and, from the darkness of the river gully, he looked up at its lighted windows from behind one of the great boulders, which are the teeth of the Cerde when the floods come down from the mountains. How they rolled and growled and groaned and crunched upon each other! Ramon, in all the turmoil of his thoughts, remembered one night when to see Dolóres and to stand all dripping beneath her window, he had dared even that peril of great waters.