with a crazy man,' and went on to make preparation for a night attack, intending to surprise Zucarraga and carry the pass in the darkness, with only the flashes of his musketry to light him.
"In the meantime Araquil was roaming about the Carlist intrenchments. With his knife in his pocket, that knife that at need he could hurl with the force of a ball from a musket and plant unerringly in the remote target, he waited, sleeping by the light of the stars, wherever he chanced to be, for an opportunity of approaching Zucarraga and ridding old Garrido of the Carlist chieftain. What was the life of that partisan commander to him? War with artillery, war with the knife, it is war all the same. One has the right to kill when he stakes his own life at the same time. He kept repeating these arguments to himself and was on the alert, watching his chance. One night when he had come too near to the half-wrecked farmhouse in which Zucarraga had his quarters among the ruins, a sentry's bullet whistled close to Araquil's head, so close that it carried away a little of the flesh from his left ear. He paid not the slightest attention to it, and regretted only one circumstance, that the Carlist sentinel had, caught sight of him. Had it not been for that he would have leaped the wall and been at Zucarraga's side! Now it was all to do over again.
"Very well, then; he would begin again on the morrow. But that morrow was the very day that Garrido had selected for the night attack. Juan Araquil, lying in a ditch, like a wild beast crouching in his lair, was forming his plans for reaching Zucarraga, this time, at every risk, at the very moment when old Garrido was sending out an attacking column against
