AS the road wound up into the mountains, fresh energy possessed the entire company. Even Carbonera became freakish, while Capitana was more than ever the practical joker of the train. The donkeys ran races. Don Manuel talked less of his winnings and more of the home-coming, though he still threatened Juanito, who crowed defiantly and brandished tiny fists, with the first orphanage they should reach. The rising spirits of the muleteers bubbled over in songs and witticisms at the expense of Pedrillo, whose devotion to Tia Marta, no longer forbidden, could not hope to escape their merry mockery; but that sweet-natured hobgoblin only grinned under their jesting, and Tia Marta, her tongue at its keenest, gave them as good as they sent. Grandfather and his riddles were by this time in high favor with the carriers, and Pilarica, as brown as a gypsy and as eager as a humming-bird, was very proud of the homage paid to his wild-honey learning.

And Rafael’s hurt was healing. He loved his father better than ever, better than in the days of that vague hero-worship, better than when the dear touch was on his shoulder and the dear voice in his ears,—touch and voice that he had missed with such an ache of longing. Now dreams and yearning had both melted into a constant loyalty, a passion of obedience, that was the pulse of the son’s heart. Pilarica understood. To the others he was still a sturdy, black-eyed urchin, ripe for mischief, with a child’s heedlessness and a boy’s boastfulness, but the little sister knew the difference between the teasing Rafael of the Moorish garden and this elder brother, whose care of her, though it lacked the tender gaiety of Rodrigo’s, had grown, since St. John’s Eve, into a steady guardianship.

They had been climbing for two hours, and those the first two hours after the siesta, when, even here among the mountains, the July heat was hard to bear. Springs were no longer infrequent and Shags had been relieved of his burden of jars, but Uncle Manuel, when they were nearing some stream long familiar to him, would find an excuse for sending Rafael on in advance that the lad might have the joy of discovery and announcement. So to-day it was their water-boy, as the carriers laughingly called him, who stood at a turn of the ascending road waving his broad-brimmed straw hat, long since substituted by Uncle Manuel, who had no faith in magic, for the beloved red fez.

“Water! Fresh, clear, sparkling water! Only a copper a glass!” shouted Rafael, imitating the cry of the Galician water-seller so common in the cities of Spain.

“A fine little fellow that!” commented Tenorio, whose long legs easily kept pace, on the climb, with Coronela.

Uncle Manuel tried his best not to look pleased.

“Needs training,” he said harshly. “Needs discipline. All boys do. I set him sums to work out in his head every day now as we ride.”

“Ay, and put him to figuring after supper, when he can hardly keep two eyes open,” grunted Tenorio. “You’ll wear out the youngster’s brains, Don Manuel.”

“The feet of the gardener never hurt the garden,” replied the master-carrier, who prided himself on the practical education that he was giving his nephew.

As the animals came in sight of the cascading stream, they brayed with joy. The donkeys and the riding mules plunged at once into the water, and the carriers speedily released the pack-mules so that these, too, might cool their legs in the pleasant swash of the current.

“Ah!” sighed Hilario, looking up from the bank where he had thrown himself down at full length to drink. “A brook of Galicia is better than a river of Castile.”

“It’s wetter, any way,” growled Bastiano, who had gone some distance up the stream to fill a leather bottle with the pure flow of the cascade. “The rivers of Castile are dry half the year and without water the other half.”

hummed Grandfather, while his eyes followed the play of a sunbeam in the waves.

“Did you ever hear,” asked Pedrillo of the children, as they watched Shags and Don Quixote revelling in the rill, “of that peasant called Swallow-Sun?”

“What a funny name!” exclaimed the little girl. “A thousand thanks, Don Bastiano.”

For Bastiano, who was never surly with Pilarica, had brought his bottle to her before he drank himself.

“He was called so,” continued Pedrillo, “because one day, when his donkey was drinking out of a stream in which the sun was reflected, the sky suddenly clouded over, and the peasant cried out in dismay: ‘Saint James defend us! My donkey has drunk up the sun.’”

It was so pleasant by the rivulet, under the shade of the great locusts, that Uncle Manuel permitted an hour’s rest.

“Don’t let us overrun the time,” he said to his nephew, and the men exchanged winks as Rafael, with an air of vast importance, consulted his watch.

Everybody welcomed Uncle Manuel’s decision. Shags and Don Quixote trotted off to a velvet patch of grass and rolled in the height of donkey happiness, their hoofs merrily beating the air. Pedrillo gathered twigs and made a bit of a fire on a broad grey rock, so that Tia Marta might heat the milk for Baby Bunting, who lay kicking on his kid-skin beside her, in the little soft shirt she had knit for him.

“This is not Castile, where I had to dig up the roots of dead bushes for fuel,” said Pedrillo, his face more comical than ever as he puffed out his cheeks to blow the flame.

“It is good to be among trees again,” admitted Tia Marta, “though the pine forests of Galicia are not beautiful like the orange-groves of Andalusia.”

“A bad year to all the grumblers in the world!” exclaimed Hilario in loyal indignation.

muttered Bastiano.

“What have you in Andalusia that shines in the sun like that white poplar yonder?” demanded Don Manuel.

Grandfather, sitting on the edge of a rock with Pilarica nestled against him, made a gesture of reverence.

“The white poplar is the first tree that God created,” he said. “It is hoary, you see, with age.

“Are there good trees and bad trees?” asked Pilarica.

“Yes,” replied Grandfather. “The trees that are green all the year round enjoy that favor in return for having given shade to the Holy Family on the journey to Egypt, but the willow, on which Judas hanged himself, is a tree to be shunned. Yet the birds love the willow, for it gives them food and shelter. Back in Estremadura, where, you remember, we saw scarcely a shrub, no birds can nest, and they say that even the wee lark, if it would visit that province, must carry its provisions on its back.”

“Are all the birds good?” asked Pilarica again.

“Almost all,” replied Grandfather.

But the swallows are best of all, because they used to build under the eaves of Joseph’s home at Nazareth and watch the face of the Christ Child at his play.”

“There was once a bird,” struck in Pedrillo, “a very saucy little bird, who ordered a fine new suit of his tailor, hatter and shoemaker, and then, quite the dandy, flew away to the palace garden. Here he alighted on a twig just outside the King’s window and had the impudence to sing:

The king, very angry, had the bird caught and broiled and, to make sure of him, ate him himself, but the little rebel raised such a riot in the royal stomach that the king was glad enough to throw him up again. The bird came out in forlorn plight, stripped of all his new feathers, but he went hopping about the garden, begging a plume from every bird he met, so that he was soon even gayer and saucier than before. But when the king tried to catch him again, he flew so fast he drank the winds and did not stop till he was above the nose of the moon.”

“Bah!” said Tia Marta. “Stuff and nonsense”

“Rubbish!” chimed in Bastiano. “Pedrillo must have been taught to lie by a serpent descended from the snake of Eden.”

“And what, pray, do you know about it?” snapped Tia Marta, turning most inconsistently against her fellow-critic, “you who are standing off there solitary as asparagus or as that ill-tempered old rat who made himself a hermitage in a cheese,—You who couldn’t tell a story half as good, no, not for a pancake full of gold-pieces!”

“What a scolding deluge is this! It froths and fizzes like cider. It’s a pity there are not stoppers enough for all the bottles in the world,” retorted Bastiano.

“Come, come!” interposed Grandfather. “Stabs heal, but sharp words never. There is a cool breeze springing up. Thank God for his angel, the wind!

The little fire on the rock flared up in the gust, and the children, who, having borrowed all the hats in the company, had ranged them in a row and were trying to outdo each other in jumping over every hat in the line and back again without a pause, came panting up to watch the flame.

“Sing us the fire songs, please, Grandfather,” coaxed Pilarica. She brought the old man his guitar and as the withered fingers moved over the strings, even Don Manuel drew near to listen.

“Ugh!” interpolated Tia Marta, who had burned her finger. Grandfather’s eyes twinkled.

“Don’t forget the one about the charcoal,” prompted Rafael.

“We stack up pine cones for fuel in our Galician cellars,” observed Uncle Manuel. “It is only the stupidest peasants who cut down our splendid chestnuts for firewood, burning their best food.”

“But there is no end to his wisdom!” gasped the admiring Hilario. “Only two more,” smiled Grandfather.

“Those are the sparks,” interpreted Pilarica.

“That’s the smoke,” expounded Rafael.

“And now do let him rest,” commanded Tia Marta, folding her bright-hued Andalusian shawl into a pillow for the white head. “Lie down there by Juanito and be quiet till the start. These children, little and big, would keep you playing and singing for them till the Day of Judgment. It’s your own fault, too. If you make yourself honey, the flies will eat you.”

While Grandfather dozed, Pedrillo put out the fire and tried to talk with Tia Marta, but she perversely turned her back.

mocked Tenorio, but Pedrillo, nothing daunted, set to making Rafael a popgun. This he did very deftly by cutting a piece of alder half as long as Pilarica’s arm, which he measured with great gravity from wrist to elbow. Drawing out the pith, he fitted into the alder tube a smaller stick to serve as ramrod, and everybody fell to searching for bits of cork, pebbles, pieces of match, anything that would do for bullets. Uncle Manuel went so far as to contribute a sharp-pointed pewter button.

So was Rafael, all unconsciously, armed for his great adventure.