As he rode on, Conyngham left a message from time to time for his self-appointed servant. At the offices of the diligencias in various towns on the great road from Cordova to Madrid he left word for Concepçion Vara to follow, should the spirit of travel be still upon him, knowing that at these places where travellers were ever passing, the tittle-tattle of the road was on the tongue of every ostler and stable help. And truly enough there followed one who made careful inquiries as to the movements of the Englishman, and heard his messages with a grim smile. But this was not Concepçion Vara.
It was late one evening when Conyngham, who had quitted Toledo in the morning, began to hunger for the sight of the towers and steeples of Madrid. He had ridden all day through the bare country of Cervantes, where to this day Spain rears her wittiest men and plainest women. The sun had just set behind the distant hills of Old Castile, and from the east, over Aranjuez, where the great river cuts Spain in two parts from its centre to the sea, a grey cloud—a very shade of night—was slowly rising. The aspect of the brown plains was dismal enough, and on the horizon the rolling unbroken land seemed to melt away into eternity and infinite space.
Conyngham reined in and looked around him. So far as eye could reach, no house arose to testify to the presence of man. No labourer toiled home to his lonely hut. For, in this country of many wars and interminable strife, it has, since the days of Nebuchadnezzar, been the custom of the people to congregate in villages and small townships, where a common danger secured some protection against a lawless foe. The road rose and fell in a straight line across the table-land without tree or hedge, and Madrid seemed to belong to another world, for the horizon, which was distant enough, bore no sign of cathedral spire or castle height.
Conyngham turned in his saddle to look back, and there, not a mile away, the form of a hurrying horseman broke the bare line of the dusty road. There was something weird and disturbing in this figure, a suggestion of pursuit in every line. For this was not Concepçion Vara. Conyngham would have known him at once. This was one wearing a better coat; indeed Concepçion preferred to face life and the chances of the world in shirt sleeves.