The noble family, we gathered, had other homes: one at Palma, and yet another at Madrid, but still they liked to return to the house that nestled so close to the great frowning mountains.
When we left she sent the pretty dark-eyed _chica_ to show us the path through the orange groves, and dispatched the eldest son hotfoot after to pick us a gift of oranges from the trees whose fruit was sweetest.
Neither the Lady nor I was inclined for much exertion. Climbing a little way up the hill, we sat down in the shade of an olive-tree and ate oranges and gossiped.
At our feet the ground slipped down into the valley, to rise on the farther side in the mountains, on whose crest we could see the remains of the towered battlements above which, in the seventeenth century, the two heroes Cabritt and Bassa kept the Majorcan flag flying, after the remainder of the island had surrendered to the usurper Alphonso IV of Aragon.
We scanned the hill-side in vain for any trace of the climbers. And while we lingered the clouds began again to gather, and scarves of mist hid the summit. The air had turned a little chilly, and we were passing the mansion on our way back to the town when we noticed a charming loggia that was built over a barn in which men seemed to be crushing olives.
Climbing the few steps that led to the open-sided loggia, we found it furnished with a couple of rush-bottomed chairs. Carrying them to the front of the balcony over which the gorgeous bougainvillea ran riot, we sat, under the row of bottle gourds that hung up to dry, looking across the wealth of rich purple blossom in which the bees were busy, and over the orange grove towards the luxuriant plain.
A shower at length drove us back to the shelter of the dining-room at the _fonda_, where the big logs that burned on the open hearth glowed a welcome. There the Squire and the Boy joined us, wet from the rain that had caught them when half-way down the mountain, but by no means weary. They described the path as having been a zigzag mule-track all the way. It was rough walking, but presented no difficulty whatever.
Near the foot of the precipitous part of the climb they had passed the first of the fourteen stations of the Cross, the final one being at the Chapel of Our Lady of the Refuge on the summit of the mountain. Each station was marked with an iron cross set in a rough cairn of stones, and each exhibited a pictorial tile representing the incident commemorated.