WHEN they gathered in the garden that evening, the grown people would still keep talking. Rafael and Pilarica, who were tired and drowsy after all the excitement of the day, missed the silence that usually fell as their father smoked and Rodrigo puzzled out his problems. To-night it seemed that nobody could keep quiet for ten seconds together.

“What shall I bring you back from Cuba, Tia Marta?” laughed Rodrigo.

“Yourself,” snapped the old woman, “with a grain of sense under your hair for something new.”

“And epaulets on my shoulders? I may return a general. Who knows?”

“Bah! Being a man I may come to be Pope. But many go out for wool and return shorn.”

Meanwhile Grandfather was strumming on his guitar and murmuring a riddle that neither of the children had heard before:

Before they could ask the answer, their father was pointing out to them the lovely cluster of stars that we call the Pleiades.

“Those are what shepherds know as the Seven Little Nanny Goats,” he said, “and that long river of twinkling light you see across the sky”—designating the Milky Way—“is the Road to Santiago. For Santiago, St. James the Apostle, was the Guardian Saint of all Spain in the centuries when the Moors and Christians were at war in the Peninsula, and the story goes that in one desperate battle, at sunrise, when the Christian cause was all but lost, there appeared at the head of their ranks an unknown knight gleaming in silver armor, as if he had ridden right out of the dawn, waving a snow-white banner stamped with a crimson cross. He charged full on the infidel army, his sword flashing through the air with such lightning force that his fierce white steed trampled the turbaned heads like pebbles beneath his hoofs. This was St. James—so the legend says—and from that time on he led the Christian hosts till the Moors were driven back to Africa. And up in Galicia, in the city of Santiago, where your Aunt Barbara lives, is his famous shrine, to which pilgrims used to flock from all over Europe, and they looked up at the heavens as they trudged along and named that beautiful stream of stars the Road to Santiago.”

Now information is amusing in the morning, and pleasant enough in the middle of the afternoon, when one’s brain has been refreshed by the siesta, but after a long day of dancing, walking, guests and feasting, information is good for little but to put one to sleep. Pilarica did not awaken even enough to know when her father and Big Brother kissed her good-night, but Rafael questioned with an enormous gape:

“Was Santiago’s horse as good as Bavieca?” and then his blinking eyes shut tight without waiting for the answer.

It was as well, as it turned out, that the children had a full night’s sleep, for never in all their lives had there been a day so crowded with emotions and surprises as the morrow. Pilarica in the great bed of the inner room and Rafael on his cot under the olive tree were aroused at the same time by angry screaming that their tousled heads, still in the borderland between sleep and waking, took at first for Lorito’s, but as the dream-mist cleared away, they knew the voice for that of Tia Marta in a rage. She was standing in the middle of the kitchen, arms akimbo, facing their father, whose hand was raised in a vain effort to check her torrent of words.

“Would you throw the rope after the bucket?” she was crying. “Is it not enough that the seÑorito must sail to the Indies, and you, but you would have me lead forth those forsaken innocents to Galicia? Galicia! That will I never do in spite of your teeth. Don’t tell me of their Aunt Barbara. Did she not stoop to marry a Galician? Bah! Coarse is the web out of which a Galician is spun. It is not the maid of the Giralda who will pass the end of her days among pigs.”

“But I cannot leave them, Marta, here on your hands. Their grandfather is now little more than a child himself. What could you do if Rodrigo and I should neither of us come back? No, no, the children must be in shelter. They must be with their kindred. The arrangements are all made. When my ship put in at Vigo for supplies, I took train to Santiago and settled the whole matter with my sister and her husband. And be assured that you, who have been so faithful, so devoted, will find warm welcome under their roof. You can be very useful to my sister.”

“Toss that bone to another dog. An Andalusian to go into service in Galicia! Take your wares to a better market. Is it at fifty years that one becomes a vagabond and goes about the world, sucking the wind? Ay de mi! The wheel of fortune turns swifter than a mill-wheel. Ah, but your heart, Don Carlos, is harder than a hazel-nut,—ay, as hard as your head, for the head of an Aragonese pounds the nail better than a hammer.”

“And your pride, my good Marta, is as big as a church. Why should you not serve my sister as you have served me? There is sunshine on the wall even in Galicia. And the children—how could they bear to lose you, too, on this day when they must lose so much? And what would become of you, if you were left behind?”

“The dear saints know. When one door shuts, another opens. Hammer away with that Aragonese head of yours till the skies fall. You are hammering on cold iron, Don Carlos. Whoever goes, Roxa and I stay here. You may tear my little angels from me, if you will, but not one step, not one inch of a step, does either foot of mine take toward Galicia.”

“Galicia? Who is going to Galicia?” called Rafael, appearing in the doorway.

“Out with you!” bade Tia Marta, stamping angrily. “The secret of three is nobody’s secret. Go wash your face, for the world is turned over since you washed it last. And out with you, too, Don Carlos, if I am ever to have a chance to get the chocolate ready.”

The chocolate, because of Tia Marta’s agitation or for some other reason, did not taste right that morning. Even Rafael set his bowl down half full. All was hurry and commotion. Rodrigo’s new knapsack and a bag of extra clothing for the voyage were swung upon Shags, while Don Quixote, who was beginning to wear a sleek and comfortable aspect that belied his name, was laden with the hammock and a couple of valises that the children, casting dismayed looks at each other, recognized as their father’s. Then Rodrigo embraced Grandfather and, with a mischievous air of gallantry, Tia Marta, who flung her arms about his neck and burst into a storm of crying. At first she refused to touch the hand that Don Carlos held out to her, but, suddenly relenting, snatched it to her lips and rushed back into the house, thrusting the ends of her saffron kerchief into her mouth to choke her sobs. Roxa, bristling and spitting, retreated under the bench. But Grandfather sat serene, crooning to his guitar:

Half the dwellers on the Alhambra hill and a swarthy troop from the gypsy caves flocked down to the railroad station with them. The English consul tucked into Rodrigo’s pocket a tiny purse through whose silken meshes came a yellow glint.

“My wife knit it last night for the finest lad we know,” he said. “If she had had more time, it would have been larger; but it serves to hold a little English gold, which is a good weapon everywhere.”

Arnaldo was in their following, and Leandro. Even Xarifa had a smile for the young soldier, but when he waved his cap to Zinga with a blithe compliment—“throwing flowers,” as the Spaniards say—the girl’s fierce eyes misted over. At the station were Rodrigo’s professors all praising him till his face was as red as a pomegranate blossom, and there, puffing and wheezing, was the Geography Gentleman, with a little case of medicine to ward off the Cuban fever, and there, just as the train was about to start, was a clumsy young peasant, who all but dropped the jar of honey he handed up to Rodrigo, and a gaunt woman, weeping like a fountain as she pressed upon her son’s deliverer a package of cheese-cakes made from milk of her one goat.

Both the children were so spell-bound by the cheering and the music, the strange faces and the dramatic scenes that were being enacted all about them, that they hardly realized what the moment meant when their father lifted them up for the good-bye kisses to Rodrigo, who, boyish and merry, stood squeezed in among his fellow-conscripts on the platform of the car. The children cried a little, but their father hushed them with a few grave words and drew them to one side, away from the press of people about the train.

“Nobody will hurt Rodrigo?” asked Pilarica, with a sudden terror knocking at her heart.

“No, my darling,” answered her father. “Nothing can hurt Rodrigo.”

“Is that because he is a hero?” queried Rafael, trying hard to get his voice safely through the fog in his throat.

“Yes,” assented Don Carlos. “That is because he is a hero. He has won his battle already.”

And with that the engine whistled, and the long train, packed close with smiling, singing, wet-eyed lads, each young figure leaning forward to wave a hand, to throw a kiss, to catch a rose, rumbled out of the station, while all along the line there rose a tumult of farewells.

“Bravo! Bravo!”

“Oh, my son!”

“Till we meet again!”

“Go with God!”

Then Don Carlos led the bewildered children back to the corner where he had left the donkeys in charge of a man who had been waiting there when they first arrived. Pilarica and Rafael were sure that they had never seen him before, for his was not a form to be forgotten, but Don Carlos had greeted him familiarly as Pedrillo. The man stood now, his short legs wide apart, grasping in one hand the bridles of Shags and Don Quixote, who were trying to pull him on to the sidewalk, while with the other he held the halter of a mule, whose ambition it was to cross the road. Behind this mule stood, in single file, two more, each with head-rope tied to the tail of the mule in front. All three were tall, well-kept, handsome animals, but the man had such a squat, dwarfish body that he looked to the children nearly as broad as he was long. The face under the grey sombrero had a nose so flat that it might about as well have had no nose at all. The stranger was dressed almost as gaily as an Andalusian in a grass-green jacket inset with yellow stripes and adorned with rows of bell-buttons, red sash, russet trousers and brown gaiters.

And now Don Carlos set his face in sterner lines than ever and spoke to the children briskly, as if there were no time to be lost.

“Your Uncle Manuel is a carrier, an expressman, as so many of the Galicians are. He is thrifty and well-to-do and owns his own train of mules. Among the muleteers who hire themselves out to him for trip after trip there is no one whom he trusts as much as Pedrillo here, and so he has sent Pedrillo to conduct you and Grandfather and Tia Marta, if she will go—”

Pedrillo winked.

“To Cordova, where you will find your uncle, with the rest of his men and mules, all ready for the return journey to Galicia, for you are to have the pleasure of a long visit with your Aunt Barbara and Cousin Dolores. But first will come wonderful weeks of travel, seeing Spain as you could never see it from the windows of a railway car.”

Pedrillo nodded hard like a toadstool in the wind.

“When your visit is done, I will come for you, if that is God’s will, but now I must take this train just drawing into the station, for I have to join my ship at Cadiz to-morrow. Rafael, listen to me. You have many things to do, my son. You must take care of your sister, now that you are the only able-bodied man left at home, and look after Shags and Don Quixote, who are going with you, and do what you can for Grandfather and Tia Marta. And be sure to kiss the Sultana’s foot for me as soon as you get back. I failed to pay her my parting respects and, besides, she may have a message for you. And Pilarica, little daughter of my heart, don’t forget to run out to the summer-house the minute you reach the garden. Who knows what may be waiting for you there? Now I leave you with Pedrillo, precious ones. Good-bye, good-bye, and Heaven bless you!”

But Rafael flung his arms wildly about his father, and would not let him go.

“Oh, I wish—I wish—” sobbed the boy.

“Wish nothing for yourself nor for me but that we may do our duty,” said Don Carlos, his voice, rich with caressing tones, as quiet as if they were all guessing riddles together under the old olive tree. “Hush! I will tell you one story, one short story, more. Will you give me a smile for a story, my Pilarica? And will you remember it every word, my Rafael, till I come again? The sun goes forth in the morning, on the course that God has set him, and never halts nor turns. Yet three times in the day he lifts his face and calls: ‘Lord, I am tired.’ And three times God answers him out of heaven and says: ‘Follow thy path.’”

Then Rafael let fall his clasping arms, and Pilarica’s smile, her mother’s smile, gleamed out through the tears, and their father’s look, as he lifted his hat, rested lovingly on two brave children before he turned and went swiftly out of their sight.