If the mountain road had been largely solitary, it was not
so of this road. There were folk enough in the wide Vega
of Granada. Clearly, as though the one party had been
dressed in black and the other in red, they divided into
vanquished and victor. Bit by bit, now through years, all
these towns and villages, all these fertile fields and bosky
places, rich and singing, had left the hand of the Moor for
the hand of the Spaniard.

In all this part of his old kingdom the Moor lay low in
defeat. In had swarmed the Christian and with the Christian
the Jew, though now the Jew must leave. The city
of Granada was not yet surrendered, and the Queen and
King held all soldiery that they might at Santa Fe, built as
it were in a night before Granada walls. Yet there seemed
at large bands enough, licentious and loud, the scum of
soldiery. Ere I reached the village that I now saw before
me I had met two such bands, I wondered, and then wondered
at my own wonder.

The chief house of the village was become an inn. Two
long tables stood in the patio where no fountain now flowed
nor orange trees grew nor birds sang in corners nor fine
awning kept away the glare. Twenty of these wild and
base fighting men crowded one table, eating and drinking,
clamorous and spouting oaths. At the other table sat together
at an end three men whom by a number of tokens
might be robbers of the mountains. They sat quiet, indifferent
to the noise, talking low among themselves in a
tongue of their own, kin enough to the soldiery not to