‘They have seen him,’ he thought with conviction. Here was at last somebody who had seen him. He made sure they would deny all knowledge of the Ingles;^* but on the contrary, they were eager to tell him that he had eaten and slept the night in the house. They both started talking together, describing his appearance and behaviour. An excitement quite fierce in its feebleness possessed them. The doubled- up sorceress waved about her wooden spoon, the puffy monster got off her stool and screeched, balancing herself from one foot to the other, while the trembling of her head was accelerated to positive vibration. Byrne was quite disconcerted by their excited behaviour. Yes! The big, fierce Englishman went away in the morning after eating a piece of bread and drinking some wine. And if the caballero wished to follow the same path nothing could be easier—in the morning.

‘You will give me somebody to show me the way?’ said Byrne.

‘Si, señor. A proper youth. The man the caballero saw going out.’

‘But he was knocking at the door,’ protested Byrne. ‘He only bolted when he saw me. He was coming in.’

‘No! no!’ the two horrid witches screamed out together. ‘Going out! Going out!’

After all it may have been true. The sound of knocking had been faint, elusive, reflected Byrne. Perhaps only the effect of his fancy. He asked: ‘Who is that man?’

‘Her novio!’^* they screamed, pointing to the girl. ‘He is gone home to a village far away from here. But he will return in the morning. Her novio! And she is an orphan—the child of poor Christian people. She lives with us for the love of God—for the love of God.’

The orphan, crouching on the corner of the hearth, had been looking at Byrne. He thought that she was more like a child of Satan kept there by these two weird harridans for the love of the devil. Her eyes were a little oblique, her mouth rather thick but admirably formed; she had a sort of wild beauty, and the whole expression of her dark face was voluptuous and untamed. As to the character of her steadfast gaze attached upon him with a sensuously savage attention, ‘to know what it was like,’ says Mr Byrne, ‘you have only to observe a hungry cat watching a bird in a cage or a mouse inside a trap.’

It was she who served him the food, of which he was glad; though with those big, slanting black eyes examining him at close range, as if he had something curious written on his face, she gave him an uncomfortable sensation. But anything was better than being approached by those bleareyed nightmarish witches. His apprehensions somehow had been soothed; perhaps by the sensation of warmth after severe exposure, and the ease of resting after the exertion of fighting the gale inch by inch all the way. He had no doubt of Tom’s safety. He was now sleeping in the mountain camp, having been met by Gonzales’ men.

Byrne rose, filled a tin goblet with wine out of a skin hanging on the wall, and sat down again. The witch with the mummy face began to talk to him, rambling of old times; she boasted of the inn’s fame in those better days. Great people in their own coaches stopped there. An archbishop slept once in the casa,^* a long, long time ago.

The witch with the puffy face seemed to be listening from her stool, motionless, except for the trembling of her head. The girl (Byrne was certain she was a casual gipsy admitted there for some reason or other) sat on the hearthstone in the glow of the embers. She hummed a tune very low, rattling a pair of castanets slightly now and then. At the mention of the archbishop she chuckled impiously and moved her head to look at Byrne, so that the red glow of the fire flashed in her black eyes and on her white teeth under the dark cowl of the enormous overmantel. And he smiled at her.

He rested now in the ease of security. His advent not having been expected, there could be no plot against him in existence. Drowsiness stole upon his senses. He enjoyed it, but keeping a hold, so he thought at least, on his wits; but he must have been gone further than he thought, because he was startled