IV
CHARLES GOULD turned towards the town. Before him the jagged peaks of the Sierra came out all black in the clear dawn. Here and there a muffled lepero whisked round the corner of a grass-grown street before the ringing hoofs of his horse. Dogs barked behind the walls of the gardens; and with the colorless light the chill of the snows seemed to fall from the mountains upon the disjointed pavements and the shuttered houses, with broken cornices and the plaster peeling in patches between the flat pilasters of the fronts. The daybreak struggled with the gloom under the arcades on the plaza, with no signs of country people disposing their goods for the day's market—piles of fruit, bundles of vegetables ornamented with flowers, on low benches under enormous mat umbrellas—with no cheery early morning bustle of villagers, women, children, and loaded donkeys. Only a few scattered knots of revolutionists stood in the vast space looking all one way from under their slouched hats for some sign of news from Rincon. The largest of those groups turned about like one man as Charles Gould passed, and shouted, "Viva la libertad!" after him in a menacing tone.
Charles Gould rode on and turned into the archway of his house. In the patio, littered with straw, a practicante, one of Dr. Monygham's native assistants,
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