ad thrown away thy material I found myself too lonely."

"Thy mother--" Pilar said.

"So I rode for the others to make it possible for it to be successful. I have brought the best that I could get. I have left them at the top so I could speak to you, first. They think I am the leader."

"Thou art," Pilar said. "If thee wishes." Pablo looked at her and said nothing. Then he said simply and quietly, "I have thought much since the thing of Sordo. I believe if we must finish we must finish together. But thou, _Ingl閟_. I hate thee for bringing this to us."

"But Pablo--" Fernando, his pockets full of grenades, a bandolier of cartridges over his shoulder, he still wiping in his pan of stew with a piece of bread, began. "Do you not believe the operation can be successful Night before last you said you were convinced it would be."

"Give him some more stew," Pilar said viciously to Maria. Then to Pablo, her eyes softening, "So you have come back, eh"

"Yes, woman," Pablo said.

"Well, thou art welcome," Pilar said to him. "I did not think thou couldst be the ruin thou appeared to be."

"Having done such a thing there is a loneliness that cannot be borne," Pablo said to her quietly.

"That cannot be borne," she mocked him. "That cannot be borne by thee for fifteen minutes."

"Do not mock me, woman. I have come back."