In a few minutes he was asleep beneath the speculative eye of Marcos, who sat in the far corner of the carriage.
The General was going to Saragossa, so they parted from him in the cold, early morning at Castejon, where an icy wind swept over the plain, and the snow lay thick on the ground.
"It will be cold at Pampeluna!" muttered the General from within the hood of his military cloak.

"I pity you! yes, good-bye; close the door." The station was full of soldiers, and their high peaked caps were at every window of the trains.

It was barely yet daylight when the Sarrions alighted at the fortified station in the plain below Pampeluna.
The city stands upon a hill which falls steeply on the northeast side to the bed of the river Arga, a green-coloured stream deep enough to give additional strength to the walls which tower above like a cliff.
Pampeluna is rightly reckoned to be the strongest city in Europe.

It is approached from the southwest by a table-land, across which run the high roads from Madrid and the French frontier.
The station lies in the plain across which the railway meanders like a stream.

Both bridges across the Arga are commanded, as is the railway station, by the guns of the city.