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The Firebrand

by S. R. Crockett · English · Gutenberg #33602 · 801,602 chars · public domain (US)

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Title: The Firebrand

Author: S. R. Crockett


        
Release date: September 1, 2010 [eBook #33602]

Language: English

Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33602

Credits: E-text prepared by Delphine Lettau, Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan, and the Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FIREBRAND ***


E-text prepared by Delphine Lettau, Suzanne Shell, Mary Meehan, and the
Project Gutenberg Online Distributed Proofreading Team
(http://www.pgdp.net)



THE FIREBRAND

by

S. R. CROCKETT







London
Macmillan and Co., Limited
New York: The Macmillan Company
1901

All rights reserved

Printed by
William Clowes and Sons, Limited,
London and Beccles.

Copyright in the United States of America by S. R. Crockett, 1901.




CONTENTS


       I. THE MAKING OF AN OUTLAW

      II. THE MAN WITHOUT A FRIEND

     III. COCK O' THE NORTH

      IV. A LITTLE COMB-CUTTING

       V. THE ABBEY OF MONTBLANCH

      VI. BROTHER HILARIO

     VII. THE ABBOT'S DINNER

    VIII. SANCTUARY

      IX. THE SHADOW OF THE DESTROYER

       X. A MAN AND HIS PRICE

      XI. CARTEL OF DEFIANCE

     XII. THE CRYING OF A YOUNG CHILD

    XIII. DON TOMAS DIGS A GRAVE

     XIV. THE HOLY INNOCENTS

      XV. ROLLO INTERVENES

     XVI. DON LUIS IS WILLING

    XVII. A GRAVE IRREGULARITY

   XVIII. A FLUTTER OF RED AND WHITE

     XIX. SIGNALS OF STORM

      XX. THE BUTCHER OF TORTOSA

     XXI. TO BE SHOT AT SUNRISE!

    XXII. HIS MOTHER'S ROSARY

   XXIII. THE BURNING OF THE MILL-HOUSE

    XXIV. HOW TO BECOME A SOLDIER

     XXV. THE MISSION OF THE SENORITA CONCHA

    XXVI. DEEP ROMANY

   XXVII. THE SERGEANT AND LA GIRALDA

  XXVIII. THE DEAD AND THE LIVING

    XXIX. A LITTLE QUEEN AT HOME

     XXX. PALACE BURGLARS

    XXXI. THE QUEEN'S ANTE-CHAMBER

   XXXII. LIKE A FALLING STAR

  XXXIII. CONCHA WAITS FOR THE MORNING

   XXXIV. OUR ROLLO TO THE RESCUE

    XXXV. THE EXECUTIONER OF SALAMANCA

   XXXVI. THE DEATH-CART

  XXXVII. THE DEAD STAND SENTINEL

 XXXVIII. CONCHA SAYS AMEN

   XXXIX. A HANDFUL OF ROSES

      XL. ALL DANDIES ARE NOT COWARDS

     XLI. ROLLO USES A LITTLE PERSUASION

    XLII. A SNARE NOT SPREAD IN VAIN

   XLIII. THE RED BOINAS OF NAVARRE

    XLIV. "FOR ROLLO'S SAKE"

     XLV. FORLORNEST HOPES

    XLVI. THE SERGEANT'S LAST SALUTE

   XLVII. MENDIZABAL

  XLVIII. A POINT OF HONOUR

    XLIX. LIKE FIRE THROUGH SUMMER GRASS

       L. AVE CONCHA IMPERATRIX




THE FIREBRAND




CHAPTER I

THE MAKING OF AN OUTLAW


Ramon Garcia, called El Sarria, lay crouched like a wild beast. And he
was a wild beast. Yet he smiled as he blinked into the midnoon heat,
under his shaggy brows, from his den beneath the great rock of limestone
that shadowed him.

El Sarria was hunted, and there was on his hands the blood of a man--to
be more particular, on his left hand. For El Sarria had smitten hard and
eager, so soon as he had seen Rafael de Flores--Rafael, the pretty boy,
the cousin of his young wife, between whom and her relative there was at
least cousinly affection. So the neighbours said, all but Manuela, the
priest's housekeeper.

So Ramon smote and wiped his Manchegan knife on his vest, in the place
under the flap at the left side where he had often wiped it before. He
used the same gesture as when he killed a sheep.

In his cave of limestone Ramon was going over the scene in his own mind.
That is why he licked his lips slowly and smiled. A tiger does that when
after a full meal he moves the loose skin over his neck twitchy-ways
and yawns with over-fed content. And Ramon, even though hunted, did the
same.

When he married little Dolores, Ramon Garcia had not dreamed that so
many things would happen. He was a rich man as men go; had his house,
his garden, his vines, a quintaine of olive-trees, was accounted quite a
match by old Manuela, the village go-between, the priest's housekeeper,
in whose hands were the hearts of many maids.

These things he, Don Ramon Garcia, had possessed (he was called Don
then) and now--he had his knife and the long, well-balanced gun which
was placed across the rests in the dryest part of the cavern.

       *       *       *       *       *

He remembered the day well. He had been from home, down by Porta in the
Cerdagne, to buy cattle, and returning home more swiftly than he had
expected, his cattle following after in the herdsman's care, the thought
of pretty Dolores making his horse's feet go quicker, a song upon his
lips, he had approached the village of Sarria de la Plana, and the home
that was his own--and hers.

A swift-falling Spanish twilight it was, he remembered, the sky, broadly
banded of orange and rose, was seen behind the highly piled houses. From
the whiteness of the long frontage, dots and flecks flashed out. Black
oblongs of glassless window-space splashed the white. Here and there a
hint of vivid colour flung itself out almost defiantly--a woman's red
petticoat drying on a cord, the green slats of a well-to-do
window-blind. There came to the ears of Ramon Garcia the click of
castanets from the semi-dark of wide-arched doors, and the soft
tink-a-tank of lightly thrummed guitars. He saw a lover or two "eating
iron," his hands clasping the bars behind which was the listening ear of
his mistress.

And throughout this village were peace and well-accustomed pleasance.
Ramon smiled. It was his home.

But not as he smiled up among the rocks of the Montblanch on the
borderlands betwixt Aragon and Catalunia.

He smiled well-pleased and minded him upon the nights not so long gone
by, when he too had "eaten iron," and clung a-tip-toe to the window-bars
of little Dolores, who lent him such a shy attention, scuttling off like
a mouse at the least stirring within the house where all her kinsfolk
slept.

There was none like her, his little Dolores! God had given her to a
rough old fellow like him, one who had endured the trampling of the
threshing floor as the car oxen drave round.

Little Dolores, how all the men had been wild to have her, but she had
loved none but Ramon Garcia alone! So said Manuela Durio, the
go-between, the priest's housekeeper, and if any did, she knew. Indeed,
there was little told at confession that she did not know. Ramon smiled
again, a wicked, knowing smile. For if Manuela owned the legitimate
fifty years which qualified her for a place in the Presbytery of Sarria
de la Plana, eyes and lips belied her official age. Anyway, she kept the
priest's conscience--and--what was more important, she swore that little
Dolores loved Ramon Garcia and Ramon Garcia alone.

"Caballero! Don Ramon!"

He started. He had been thinking of the woman at that very moment, and
there was her voice calling him. He turned about. The broad rose-glow
had deepened to the smoky ruby of a Spanish gloaming, as it lingered
along the western hill-tops. These last shone, in spite of the glowing
darkness, with a limpid and translucent turquoise like that of the
distant landscape in a Siennese picture.

"Don Ramon! wait--I would speak with you!"

It was indeed the priest's Manuela who called him, and though his heart
hasted forward to Dolores, and overleaped boundaries as a dog leaps a
wall, still he could not refuse Manuela. Had she not brought them
together at the first?

"Ah, Manuela, you are kind--there is good news up at the house, is there
not? No ill has befallen the little one?"

"What has brought you home so soon?" cried the woman, a touch of
impatient eagerness in her tones. "You will frighten Dolores if you
blunder it upon her all unshaven and travel-stained like that. Have you
no more sense, when you know----?"

"Know what? I know nothing!" Ramon slurred his speech in his eagerness.
"What is there to know?"

Manuela laughed--a little strained sound, as if she had been recovering
a shaken equanimity, and was not yet sure of her ground.

"You, so long married--five, six months, is it not so--and yet not to
know! But a fool is always a fool, Don Ramon, even if he owns a vineyard
and a charming young wife ten times too good for him!"

"Truth of God!" gasped Ramon, with his favourite oath, "but I did not
know. I am the father of all donkeys. But what am I to do, tell me,
Manuela? I will obey you!"

The woman's countenance suddenly cleared.

"No, Don Ramon, we will not call the promised one--the blessed one, a
donkey. A father! Yes, Don Ramon, but no father of _borricos_. No, no!
There will not be so brave a babe from Navarra to Catalunia as yours and
Lola's. But we must go quietly, very quietly. He walks far who begins
slowly. He who treads upon eggs does not dance the _bolero_. You will
bide here and talk to the holy Father, and I myself will go to the house
of Ramon of the Soft Heart and the Lumbering Hoofs, and warn the little
one warily. For I know her--yes, Manuela knows her. I am a widow and
have borne children--ay, borne them also to the grave, and who, if not
I, should know the hearts of young wives that are not yet mothers!"

She patted his arm softly as she spoke, and the great rough-husked heart
of Ramon of Sarria, the Aragonese peasant, glowed softly within him. He
looked down into Manuela's black eyes that hid emotion as a stone is
hidden at the bottom of a mountain tarn. Manuela smiled with thin
flexible lips, her easy subtle smile. She saw her way now, and to do her
justice she always did her best to earn her wages.

Lovers would be lovers, so she argued, God had made it so. Who was she,
Manuela, the housekeeper of Padre Mateo of Sarria, to interfere for the
prevention of the designs of Providence? And cousins too--the young
cavalier so gallant, so handsome--and--so generous with his money. Had
he not even kissed Manuela herself one night when he came coaxing her to
contrive something? _Who_ could resist him after that? And what was a
hand thrust through the _rejas_? What a kiss if the bars of the grille
happened to be broken. A glass that is drunk from, being washed, is
clean as before. And when Ramon Garcia, that great Aragonese oaf, kissed
little Dolores, what knew he of pretty Don Rafael de Flores, the
_alcalde's_ son? They had been lovers since childhood, and there was no
harm. 'Twas pity surely, to part them before the time. Rafael was to
marry the rich Donna Felesia, the daughter of the vine-grower of
Montblanch, who farmed the revenues of the great abbey. He could not
marry pretty little Dolores! It was a pity--yes, but--she had a feeling
heart, this Manuela, the priest's housekeeper, and the trade had been a
paying one since the beginning of the world.

"Padre--Padre Mateo!" she cried, raising her voice to the pitch
calculated by long experience to reach the father in his study. "Come
down quickly. Here is Don Ramon to speak with your reverence!"

"Don Ramon--what Don Ramon?" growled a voice from the stair-head, a rich
baritone organ, unguented with daily dole of oil and wine, not to speak
of well-buttered trout in a lordly dish, and with rappee coloured red
with the umber of Carthagena to give timbre and richness thereto. It was
the voice of Don Mateo Balin, most pious and sacerdotal vicar of Christ
in the township of Sarria.

"Don Ramon Garcia, most reverend father!" said Manuela, somewhat
impatiently. "If you will tap your snuff-box a little less often, you
will be all the sooner able to hear what he has to say to you!"

"_Don_ Ramon, indeed!--here's advancement," grumbled the priest,
good-humouredly descending the staircase one step at a time. To do this
he held his body a little sideways and let himself down as if uncertain
of the strength of the Presbytery stairs, which were of stone of
Martorel, solid as the altar steps of St. Peter's.

"Good, good!" he thought to himself, "Manuela wants something of this
chuckle-head that she goes Don-ing him, and, I wager, battening him with
compliments as greasy as an old wife's cookery the first day after Lent.
'Tis only eggs in the pan that are buttered, and I wonder why she has
been buttering this oaf." Then he spoke aloud. "Ah, Ramon, back already!
We thought you had been buying beeves in the Cerdagne. I suppose the
little Dolores dragged you back. Ho, ho, you young married men! Your
hearts make fools of your feet. 'Tis only celibacy, that most sacred and
wise institution of Holy Mother Church, that can preserve man his
liberty--certainly, Manuela, I will put away my snuff-box, I was not
aware that it was in my hand! And I will _not_ drop any more on my new
soutane, which indeed, as you say, I had no business to be wearing on an
ordinary day."

While Don Mateo thus spoke, and, talking all the time, moved lightly for
so gross a man to and fro on his verandah, Manuela with a quick hitch of
her muffling mantilla about the lower part of her face, took her way
swiftly up the village street.

"This way, Ramon--this way! A plague take those spider-legged chairs.
They are all set crosswise in the way of an honest man's feet. Manuela
keeps all so precise, nothing is ever left where it would be most
convenient. Not that she is not the best of souls, our good Manuela and
a pearl of price--a very Martha in the house, a woman altogether above
rubies! Is she quite gone? Sit you down then, Ramon, here is the
wine-skin, under the seat to the left, and tell me of your journey,
speaking at ease as man to man. This is no confessional, which reminds
me, sirrah, that you have not come to your duty since Easter. Ah, again
the married man! 'He minds the things of his wife,' saith the holy
apostle, in my opinion very justly."

Ramon had seated himself on a chair at one corner of the priest's
verandah--a deep screen of leaves was over them. The mosquitoes and
gnats danced and lit, hummed and bit, but neither the priest nor yet
Ramon minded them in the least. They were men of Sarria, bred of the
reed-fenced villages of the Aragonese border, blooded by the
grey-backed, white-bellied mosquitoes which took such sore toll alike of
the stranger within the wall, and through the skin of the Proselyte of
the Gate.

But as the priest boomed forth his good-humoured gossip in a voice
monotonous and soothing as the _coo-rooing_ of a rock pigeon, suddenly
there rose out of the tangle of roses and vine leaves behind him, an
evil thing against which Don Ramon's birthright gave him no immunity. It
stung and fled.

"Go home, fool!" hissed a voice in his ear, as he sat silent and
spellbound in the dusk, "go home, shamed one. Your wife is with her
lover, and Manuela has gone to warn them!"

The good priest hummed on, plaiting and replaiting his fingers and
pursing his lips.

"As I was saying, 'tis no use marrying a woman without money. That is
the _olla_ without bacon. But for pleasure to himself, neither should a
man marry without love. 'Tis a lying proverb which sayeth that all
women are alike in the dark. A fair maid is surely worth a farthing
candle to kiss her by. Not that I know aught about the matter, being a
clerk and a man of years and bodily substance. But a wise man learns
many things in spite of himself. What is the use of being a priest and
not knowing? But believe me, if money be the bacon and beef, love is the
seasoning of the dish, the _pimientos_ and Ronda pippins of a wise man's
_olla_!"

Through this sacerdotal meditation the hissing whisper lifted itself
again. Ramon had not moved. His great hand lay along the stone
balustrade. A mosquito was gorging himself at a vein upon the hairy
wrist.

"There is a broken bar on the lower window, Ramon the fool! They are
kissing each other thereat and calling sweet names--these two, the
cousin whom she loves--Rafael, the pretty boy, and little Dolores whom
you have made your wife----"

"God's blood, for this I will have your life!" cried Ramon so suddenly
that the worthy priest tumbled backward before he had even time to cross
himself. And Ramon was over the parapet with his long knife bare in his
hand. It had gone ill with the traitor if Ramon Garcia had caught him
then.

But even as he had arisen, exhaled from the undergrowth like an evil
breath, so he vanished into the night, blown away by Ramon's rush over
the edge of the balcony like a fly escaping before a man's hand.

"I will follow the liar to the world's end!" said Ramon between his
teeth, furiously, and he threshed through the tangle as an elephant
charges through young jungle.

But even as he went the words of the viper fermented in his brain till
he went mad.

"There _is_ a broken bar--what more likely! The house is old--my
father's father's. There was a tale of my grandfather's sister--avenged
truly, but still a tale told in whispers in the twilight. God's truth,
could it be even thus with Dolores, little Dolores, whom I have held
next in honour and purity to Mary the mother of God?"

So he meditated, dashing this way and that to find his enemy.

"Ah, fool! Three times fool to trust a woman! How true the proverb, 'Who
sees his wife crane her neck through the jalousies, had better twist it
and be done!'"

He would go! Yes, he would know. If this thing were false (as he prayed
God), he would kneel and kiss her little white feet. They were
pink--yes, pink on the instep as the heart of a sea-shell. And he,
Ramon, would set the arched instep on his neck and bid her crush him for
a faithless unbelieving hound to suspect his own--his purest--his only!

But, that cousin, Rafael de Flores--ah, the rich youth. He remembered
how once upon a time when he was a young man going to market driving his
father's oxen, he had seen Rafael rushing about the orchard playing with
Dolores. They had been together thus for years, more like brother and
sister than cousins.

Was it not likely? How could it be otherwise? He knew it all now. His
eyes were opened. Even the devil can speak truth sometimes. He knew a
way, a quicker road than Manuela dreamed of--up the edge of the ravine,
across by the pine tree which had fallen in the spring rains. He would
go and take them together in their infamy. That would be his
home-coming.

       *       *       *       *       *

"_You dog of dogs!_"

In the darkness of the night Ramon saw a window from whose grille, bent
outward at the bottom like so many hoops, one had been slipped cunningly
aside.

"Chica, dearest--my beloved!"

The face of the speaker was within, his body without.

Up rose behind him the great bulk of Ramon Garcia, henceforward to be El
Sarria, the outlaw.

The Albacete dagger was driven deep between the shoulder-blades. The
young lithe body drew itself together convulsively as a clasp knife
opens and shuts again. There was a spurt of something hot on Ramon's
hand that ran slowly down his sleeve, growing colder as it went. A
shriek came from within the _rejas_ of bowed iron.

       *       *       *       *       *

And after this fashion Ramon Garcia, the vine-dresser, the man of means,
became El Sarria, the man without a home, without friends, an outlaw of
the hills.




CHAPTER II

THE MAN WITHOUT A FRIEND


Yet on the side of Rafael and little Dolores Garcia there was something
to be said. Ramon, had he known all, need not have become "El Sarria,"
nor yet need young de Flores, the alcalde's son, have been carried home
to the tall house with the courtyard and the one fig tree, a stab under
his right shoulder-blade, driven through from side to side of his white
girlish body.

It was true enough that he went to the house of Ramon to "eat iron," to
"pluck the turkey," to "hold the wall." But 'twas not Dolores, the wife
of Ramon, who knew of it, but pretty Andalucian Concha, the handmaiden
and companion Ramon had given his wife when they were first married.
Concha was niece to the priest's Manuela, a slim sloe-eyed witty thing,
light of heart and foot as a goose feather that blows over a common on a
northerly breeze. She had had more sweethearts than she could count on
the fingers of both hands, this pleasantly accommodative maiden, and
there was little of the teaching of the happy guileful province in which
Concha needed instruction, when for health and change of scene she came
to the house of Ramon and Dolores Garcia in the upland village of
Sarria.

These were the two fairest women in all Sarria--nay, in all that border
country where, watered by the pure mountain streams, fertile Catalunia
meets stern and desolate Aragon, and the foot-hills of the Eastern
Pyrenees spurn them both farther from the snows.

Well might her lovers say there was none like her--this Concha Cabezos,
who had passed her youth in a basket at her mother's feet in the tobacco
manufactories of Sevilla, and never known a father. Tall as the tower of
Lebanon that looketh towards Damascus, well bosomed, with eyes that
promised and threatened alternate, repelled and cajoled all in one
measured heave of her white throat, Concha of the house of Ramon, called
"little" by that Spanish fashion of speech which would have invented a
diminutive for Minerva herself, brought fire and destruction into
Sarria. As the wildfire flashes from the east to the west, so the fame
of her beauty went abroad. Also the wit of her replies--how she had
bidden Pedro Morales (who called himself, like Don Jaime, "El
Conquistador") to bring her a passport signed at all his former houses
of call; how she had "cast out the sticks" of half the youth of the
village, till despised batons strewed the ground like potsherds. And so
the fame of little Concha went ever farther afield.

Yet when Rafael, the alcalde's son, came to the window on moonless
nights, Concha was there. Hers was the full blood, quick-running and
generous of the south, that loves in mankind a daintiness and effeminacy
which they would scorn in their own sex.

So, many were the rich golden twilights when the two lovers whispered
together beneath the broad leaves of the fig-trees, each dark leaf
rimmed with the red of the glowing sky. And Rafael, who was to marry the
vine-dresser's daughter, and so must not "eat the iron" to please any
maid, obeyed the word of Concha more than all Holy Writ, and let it be
supposed that he went to the Ramon's house for the sake of his cousin
Dolores.

For this he paid Manuela to afford him certain opportunities, by which
he profited through the cleverness of Concha and her aunt Manuela. For
that innocent maid took her mistress into her confidence--that is, after
her kind. It was wonderfully sad, she pleaded. She had a lover--good,
generous, eager to wed her, but his family forbade, and if her kind
mistress did not afford her the opportunity she would die. Yes, Concha
would die. The maids of Andalucia ofttimes died for love. Then the tears
ran down her cheeks and little Dolores wept for company, and because she
also was left alone.

Thus it chanced that this foolish Rafael, the alcalde's son, marched
whistling softly to his fate. His broad sombrero was cocked to the left
and looped on the side. His Cordovan gloves were loosely held in his
right hand along with his tasselled cane. He had an eye to the
pavemented street, lest he should defile his lacquered shoes with the
points carved like eagle's beaks. He whistled the jota of Aragon as he
went, and--he quite forgot Ramon, the great good-humoured giant with
whom he had jested and at whom he had laughed. He was innocent of all
intent against little Lola, his playmate. He would as soon have thought
of besieging his sister's balcony, or "plucking the turkey" under his
own mother's window.

But he should not have forgotten that Ramon Garcia was not a man to
wait upon explanations, when he chanced on what seemed to touch the
honour of his house. So Rafael de Flores, because he was to marry
Felesia Grammunt and her wine-vats, and Concha the Andaluse, because to
be known as Rafael's sweetheart might interfere with her other loves,
took the name of Ramon Garcia's wife in vain with light reckless hearts.
This was indeed valorously foolish, though Concha with her much wisdom
ought to have known better. But a woman's experience, that of such a
woman as Concha at least, refers exclusively to what a man will do in
relation to herself. She never considered what Ramon Garcia might do in
the matter of his wife Dolores.

Concha thought that giant cold, stupid, inaccessible. When she first
came into the clear air of the foot-hills from Barcelona (where a
promising adventure had ended in premature disaster) she had tried her
best wiles upon Ramon.

She had met him as he came wearied home, with a basin of water in her
two hands, and the deference of eye-lashes modestly abased. He passed
her by, merely dipping his finger-tips in the water without so much as
once looking at her. In the shade of the pomegranate trees in the
corner, knowing herself alone, she had touched the guitar all
unconscious, and danced the dance of her native Andalucia with a verve
and abandon which she had never excelled. Then when Ramon discovered
himself in an arbour near by and congratulated her upon her
performance--in the very middle of her tearful protestations that if she
had only known he was there, she would never, never have dared, never
have ventured, and could he forgive her--he had tramped unconscious
away. And instead of forgiving her in a fit and proper manner, he had
said he would go and bring down his wife to see her dance the _bolero_
in the Andalucian manner. It would afford Dona Dolores much pleasure.

With such a man who could do anything? It was a blessing all men were
not alike, said Concha with a pout. And indeed from Cadiz by the sea to
the mountains of the north she had found men otherwise--always quite
otherwise, this innocent much experienced little Concha.

       *       *       *       *       *

Meanwhile the hunters closed in on Ramon the brigand on the hills above
Montblanch. One cannot kill (or as good as kill) an alcalde's son
without suffering for it, and it chanced that the government, having
been reproached on all sides for lack of vigour, and being quite unable
to capture Don Carlos or Zumalacarregui, had resolved to make an example
of Ramon, called "El Sarria."

So to begin with, it had confiscated all that Ramon possessed--house and
farm, vineyard and oliveyard, wine-presses and tiers of well-carpentered
vats with the wine of half a score of vintages maturing therein. These
were duly expropriated in the name of the government of the most
Christian regent Dona Maria Cristina. But how much of the produce stuck
to the fingers of General Rodriguez, the military governor, and of Senor
Amado Gomez, administrator of so much of the province as was at that
time in the hands of the Cristinos, who shall say? It is to be feared
that after these gentlemen had been satisfied, there remained not a
great deal for the regencial treasure-chest at Madrid.

Meantime Ramon lay on his rock-ledge and wondered--where little Dolores
was, chiefly, and to this he often returned. If he had had time that
night would he have killed her? Sometimes he thought so, and then
again--well, she was so small, so dainty, so full of all gentle ways and
winsomenesses and--hell and furies, it was all deceit! She had been
deceiving him from the first! Those upward glances, those shy, sweet
confidences, sudden, irresistible revealings of her heart, he had
thought they were all for him. Fool! Three times fool! He knew better
now. They were practised on her husband that she might act them better
before her lover. God's truth, he would go down and kill her even now,
as he had killed that other. Why had he not waited? He could easily have
slain the soldiers who had rushed upon him, whom that hell-cat Manuela
had brought--ah, he was glad he had marked her for life.

       *       *       *       *       *

"_Ping! Ping!_" Two rifle bullets sang close past the brigand's head
as he lay in his rocky fastness. He heard them splash against the damp
stone behind him, and the limestone fell away in flakes. A loose stone
rumbled away down and finally leaped clear over the cliff into the mist.

El Sarria's cavern lay high up on the slopes of the Montblanch, the holy
white mountain, or rather on an outlying spur of it called the Peak of
Basella. Beneath him, as he looked out upon the plain, three thousand
feet below, the mists were heaped into glistening white Sierras, on
which the sun shone as upon the winter snows of the far away Pyrenees.

As the sun grew stronger Ramon knew well that his mountain fastness
would be stormed and enveloped, by these delusive cloud-continents. They
would rise and dissipate themselves into the faint bluish haze of
noonday heat.

Already there appeared far down the cleft called the Devil's Gulf, which
yawned below the Peak of Basella, certain white jets of spray tossed
upwards as from a fountain, which were the forerunners of that coming
invasion of mist that would presently shut him out from the world.

But not a moment did Ramon waste. As quick as the grasshopper leaps from
the flicked forefinger, so swift had been El Sarria's spring for his
rifle. His cartouches lay ready to his hand in his belt of untanned
leather. His eyes, deep sunken and wild, glanced everywhere with the
instant apprehension of the hunted.

_Ping! Ping!_

Again the bullets came hissing past him. But Ramon was further back
within his cave this time, and they whistled over his head. The chips of
brittle limestone fell with a metallic clink on the hard stone floor.

El Sarria saw from whence one at least of his enemies had fired. A
little drift of white reek was rising from the mouth of a cavern on the
opposite escarpment of the Montblanch. He knew it well, but till now he
had thought that but one other person did so, his friend Luis Fernandez
of Sarria. But at the same moment he caught a glimpse of a blue jacket,
edged with red, round the corner of a grey boulder up which the young
ivy was climbing, green as April grass. The contrast of colour helped
his sight, as presently it would assist his aim.

"The Lads of the Squadron!" he murmured grimly. And then he knew that it
had come to the narrow and bitter pass with him.

For these men were no mere soldiers drafted from cities, or taken from
the plough-tail with the furrow-clay heavy upon their feet. These were
men like himself; young, trained to the life of the brigand and the
contrabandista. Now they were "Migueletes"--"Mozos de la
Escuadra"--"Lads of the Squadron," apt in all the craft of the smuggler,
as good shots as himself, and probably knowing the country quite as
well.

For all that El Sarria smiled with a certain knowledge that he had a
friend fighting for him, that would render vain all their vaunted
tracker's craft. Miguelete or red-breeched soldier, guerilla or
contrabandista, none could follow him through that rising mist which
boiled like a cauldron beneath. Ramon blew the first breath of its sour
spume out through his nostrils like cigarette smoke, with a certain
relish and appreciation.

"They have found me out, indeed, how, I know not. But they have yet to
take Ramon Garcia!" he muttered, as he examined the lock of his gun.

He knew of a cleft, deep and secret, the track of an ancient
watercourse, which led from his cave on the Puig, past the cliff at the
foot of which was perched the great and famous Abbey of Montblanch, to
another and a yet safer hold among the crags and precipices of
Puymorens.

This none knew but his friend and brother, dearer to his soul than any
other, save little Dolores alone--Luis Fernandez, whose vineyard had
neighboured his in the good days when--when he had a vineyard. He was
the groomsman, who, even in those old days, had cared for Dolores with
more than a brother's care. The secret of the hidden passage was safe
with him. Ramon held this thought to his soul amid the general wreck.
This one friend at least was true. Meantime yonder was a Miguelete
behind a stone--a clumsy one withal. He, El Sarria, would teach him the
elements of his trade. He drew a bead on the exposed limb. The piece
cracked, and with a yell the owner rolled back behind his protecting
boulder. For the next hour not a cap-stem was seen, not a twig of
juniper waved.

El Sarria laughed grimly. His eye was still true and his rifle good as
ever. That was another friend on whose fidelity he could rely. He patted
the brown polished stock almost as he used to do little Lola's cheek in
the evenings when they sat at their door to watch Jose, the goatherd,
bringing his tinkling flock of brown skins and full udders up from the
scanty summer pasturage of the dried watercourses.

Ah, there at last! The mist rose quite quickly with a heave of huge
shoulders, strong and yet unconscious, like a giant turning in his
sleep. From every direction at once the mist seemed to swirl upwards
till the cave mouth was whelmed in a chaos of grey tormented spume, like
the gloom of a thundercloud. Then again it appeared to thin out till the
forms of mountains very far away were seen as in a dream. But Ramon knew
how fallacious this mirage was, and that the most distant of these
seeming mountain summits could be reached in a dozen strides--that is,
if you did not break your neck on the way, much the most probable
supposition of all.

Ramon waited till the mist was at its thickest, rising in hissing
spume-clouds out of the deeps. Then with a long indrawing of breath into
his lungs, like a swimmer before the plunge, he struck out straight for
the cave on the face of the Montblanch from which the bullets had come.

But long ere he reached it, the ground, which had been fairly level so
far, though strewn with myriads of rocky fragments chipped off by winter
frosts and loosened by spring rains, broke suddenly into a succession of
precipices. There was only one way down, and El Sarria, making as if he
would descend by it, sent instead a great boulder bounding and roaring
down the pass.

He heard a shouting of men, a crash and scattering thunder of falling
fragments far below. A gun went off. A chorus of angry voices
apostrophised the owner, who had, according to them, just as much chance
of shooting one of his comrades as El Sarria.

Ramon laughed when he heard this, and loosening a second huge stone ("to
amuse the gentlemen in the blue and red," he said), he sent it after the
first.

Then without waiting to ascertain the effect, Ramon plunged suddenly
over an overhanging rock, apparently throwing himself bodily into space.
He found his feet again on an unseen ledge, tip-toed along it, with his
fingers hooked in a crack, and lo! the rock-face split duly in twain and
there was his cleft, as smooth and true as if the mountain had been cut
in half, like a bridescake, and moved a little apart.

There was the same glad defiance in the heart of El Sarria, which he had
felt long ago, when as a boy he lay hidden in the rambling cellars of
the old wine-barn, while his companions exhausted themselves in loud and
unavailing research behind every cask and vat.

And indeed the game was in all points identically the same. For in no
long space of time, Ramon could hear the shouting of his pursuers above
him. It was dark down there in the cleft, but once he caught a glimpse
of blue sky high above him, and again the fragrance of a sprig of thyme
was borne to his nostrils. The smell took him at an advantage, and
something thickened painfully in his throat. Dolores had loved that
scent as she had loved all sweet things.

"It is the bee's flower," she had argued one night, as he had stood with
his arm under her mantilla, looking out at the wine-red hills under a
fiery Spanish gloaming, "the bees make honey, _and I eat it_!"

Whereat he had called her a "greedy little pig," with a lover's fond
abuse of the thing he most loves, and they had gone in together quickly
ere the mosquitoes had time to follow them behind the nets which Ramon
had held aside a moment for her to enter.

Thinking of this kept Ramon from considering the significance of the
other fact he had ascertained. Above he saw the blue sky, deep blue as
the Mediterranean when you see it lie land-bound between two
promontories.

Then it struck him suddenly that the mist must have passed. If he went
now he would emerge in the clear sunshine of even. Well, it mattered
not, he would wait in the cleft for sunset and make his escape then. He
knew that the "Lads of the Squadron" would be very hot and eager on the
chase, after one of them had tasted El Sarria's bullet in his thigh. He
would have a short shrift and no trial at all if he fell into their
hands. For in those days neither Carlist nor Cristino either asked or
gave quarter. And, indeed, it was more than doubtful if even the
Carlists themselves would spare El Sarria, whose hand was against every
man, be he King's man or Queen's man.

The evening darkened apace. Ramon made his way slowly to the bottom of
the cleft. There was the wide _arroyo_ beneath him, brick-red and hot, a
valley of dry bones crossed here and there by rambling goat tracks, and
strewn with boulders of all sizes, from that of a chick-pea to that of a
cathedral.

It was very still there. An imperial eagle, serenely adrift across the
heavens, let his shadow sail slowly across the wide marled trough of the
glen. There could be no fear now.

"Well," thought Ramon, with philosophy, "we must wait--none knows of
this place. Here I am secure as God in his Heaven. Let us roll a
cigarette!"

So, patiently, as only among Europeans a Spaniard can, El Sarria waited,
stretching his fingers out to the sun and drawing them in, as a tiger
does with his claws, and meanwhile the afternoon wore to evening.

At last it was time.

Very cautiously, for now it was life or death, yet with perfect
assurance that none knew of his path of safety, Ramon stole onward. He
was in the jaws now. He was out. He rushed swiftly for the first huge
boulder, his head drawn in between his shoulders, his gun held in his
left hand, his knife in his right.

But from the very mouth of the pass six men sprang after him, and as
many more fronted him and turned him as he ran.

"Take him alive! A hundred duros to the man who takes El Sarria alive!"

He heard the voice of the officer of Migueletes. He saw the short,
businesslike sword bayonets dance about him like flames. The uniforms
mixed themselves with the rocks. It was all strange and weird as in a
dream.

But only one face he saw crystal clear. One man alone inevitably barred
his way. He dropped his gun. He could run better without it. They were
too many for that, and it was not needed. He tore his way through a
brace of fellows who had closed in upon him eager for the reward.

But through all the pother he still dashed full at the man whose face he
knew. This time his knife made no mistake. For assuredly no enemy, but a
friend, had done this--even Luis Fernandez, the brother of his heart.

And leaving the wounded strewn among the grey boulders and all the
turmoil of shouting men, Ramon the hunted, broke away unscathed, and the
desolate wilderness of Montblanch swallowed him up. Yet no wilderness
was like this man's heart as he fled down and down with his knife still
wet in his hand. He had no time to wipe it, and it dripped as he ran.

_For this man had now neither wife nor friend._




CHAPTER III

COCK O' THE NORTH


"_Carai! Caramba! Car----!_ This bantam will outface us on our own
dung-hill! Close in there, Pedro! Take down the iron spit to him, Jose!
Heaven's curses on his long arm! A foreigner to challenge us to fight
with the knife, or with the sword, or with the pistol!"

From the kitchen of the venta at San Vicencio, just where the track up
the Montblanch takes its first spring into the air, came these and other
similar cries. It was a long and narrowish apartment--the upper portion
merely of a ground-floor chamber, which occupied the whole length of the
building.

Part of the space was intended for horses and mules, and indeed was
somewhat overcrowded by them that night. These being alarmed by the
tumult and shoutings, were rearing so far as their short unsinkered
head-stalls permitted them, and in especial making play with their feet
at the various _machos_ or he-mules scattered among them. These gladly
retaliated, that being their form of relaxation, and through the
resulting chaos of whinnying, stamping, neighing, and striking of sparks
from pavement stones, skirmished a score of brown imps, more than half
naked, each armed with a baton or stout wand with which he struck and
pushed the animals entrusted to their care out of the reach of harm, or
with equal good-will gave a sly poke with the sharp spur of the goad to
a neighbour's beast, by way of redressing any superiorities of heels or
teeth.

But all the men had run together to the kitchen end of the apartment.
Where the stable ended there was a step up, for all distinction between
the abode of beasts and of men. Over this step most of those who had
thus hasted to the fray incontinently stumbled. And in the majority of
instances their stumble had been converted into a fall by a blow on the
sconce, or across the shoulders, from the flat of a long sword wielded
by the arm of a youth so tall as almost to reach the low-beamed ceiling
along which the spiders were scuttling, in terror doubtless of the
sweeping bright thing on which the firelight played as it waved this way
and that.

First in the fray were a round dozen of Migueletes, come in from an
unsuccessful chase, and eager to avenge on a stranger the failure and
disgrace they had suffered from one of their own race. Next came a young
butcher or two from the killing-yards, each already a _toreador_ in his
own estimation. The rest were chiefly _arrieros_ or carriers, with a
stray gipsy from the south, dark as a Moor; but every man as familiar
with the use of his long curved sheath-knife as a cathedral priest with
his breviary.

Meanwhile the tall young man with the long sword was not silent. His
Spanish was fluent if inelegant, and as it had been acquired among the
_majos_ of Sevilla and the mule-clippers of Aragon rather than in more
reputable quarters, his speech to the critical ear was flavoured with a
certain rich allusiveness of personality and virility of adjective
which made ample amends (in the company in which he found himself) for
any want of grammatical correctness.

With the Spanish anathemas that formed the main portion of his address,
he mingled certain other words in a foreign tongue, which, being
strong-sounding and guttural, served him almost as well in the Venta of
San Vicencio as his _Carais_ and _Carambas_.

"_Dogs of dog-mothers without honour!_ Come on, and I will stap twal
inches o' guid steel warranted by Robin Fleming o' the Grassmarket doon
your throats! A set o' gabbling geese--tak' that! With your virgins and
saints! Ah, would you? There, that will spoil your sitting down for a
day or two, my lad! Aye, scart, gin it does ye ony guid?"

A knife in his left hand, and in his right the long waving sword, bitter
and sometimes unknown and mysterious words in his mouth, this youth kept
his enemies very successfully at bay, meeting their blades six at a
time, and treading and turning so lightly that as he lunged this way and
that, there was a constant disorganisation among the opposing ranks, as
one and the other sprang back to elude his far-reaching point.

"He is of the devil--a devil of devils!" they cried. "We shall all
perish," wailed an old woman, shrinking back further into the
chimney-corner, and wringing her hands.

Meanwhile the youth apostrophised his blade.

"My bonny Robin Fleemin'--as guid as ony Toledan steel that ever was
forged! What do you think o' that for Leith Links? And they wad hae
made me either a minister or a cooper's apprentice!"

As he spoke he disarmed one of his chief opponents, who in furious anger
snatched a pistol and fired point-blank. The shot would indubitably have
brought down the young hero of the unequal combat, had not a stout
ruddy-faced youth, who had hitherto been leaning idly against the wall,
knocked up the owner's arm at the moment the pistol went off.

"Ha' done!" cried the new-comer in English; "twenty to one is bad
enough, specially when that one is a fool. But pistols in a house-place
are a disgrace! Stand back there, will ye?"

And with no better weapon than a long-pronged labourer's fork snatched
from the chimney-corner, he set himself shoulder to shoulder with the
young Scot and laid lustily about him.

That son of an unkindly soil, instead of being grateful for this
interference on his behalf, seemed at first inclined to resent it.

"What call had ye to put your neck in danger for an unkenned man's
sake?" he cried, crabbedly. "Couldna ye hae letten me fill thae carles'
skins as fu' o' holes as a riddle?"

"I am not the man to stand and see a countryman in danger!" said the
other, while the broad sweeps of his companion's sword and the energetic
lunges of his own trident kept the enemy at a respectful distance.

Suddenly a thought struck the Englishman. Without dropping the fork, he
rushed to the hearth, where the _ollas_ and _pucheros_ of the entire
company bubbled and steamed, he caught the largest of the pots in one
hand and threatened to overturn the entire contents among the ashes and
_debris_ on the floor.

"I speak their lingo but ill," he cried to his companion; "but tell them
from John Mortimer, that if they do not cease their racket, I will
warrant that they shall not have an onion or a sprig of garlic to stink
their breaths with this night. And if that does not fear them, nothing
will--not Purgatory itself!"

The young man communicated this in his own way, and though every man
among his assailants was to the full as brave as himself, the threat of
the Englishman did not fail in its effect. The _arrieros_ and Aragonese
horse-clippers drew off and consulted, while the Scot who had caused all
the disturbance, dropped his point to the floor, and contented himself
with wrapping his cloak more tightly about his defensive arm. He had
evidently been some time in the country, for he wore the dark _capa_ and
red _boina_ of Navarra, and answered the deputation which now came
forward with readiness and composure. Whoever gave in, it would
certainly not be he. That, at least, was the impression given by his
attitude.

"Certainly, most certainly," he said. "I will be glad to meet any one of
you anywhere. I will stand to my words spoken in any language, or any
field of honour, from the carpet of a prime minister to one of your
infernal dusty _campos_, with any weapon, from pistol and sword to a
tooth-pick--with any Spaniard, or Frenchman, or mongrel tyke that ever
lifted wine pot."

"Is this a way to speak to gentlemen--I put it to you, caballeros?"
cried one of the deputation, a huge rawboned Galician, angrily.

The Scot instantly detected the accent of the speaker and, dismissing
him with the gesture one uses to a menial, called out, "Caballeros,
indeed! What needs this son of the burden-bearing animal to speak of
Caballeros? Is there any old Castilian here, of the right ancient stock?
If so, let him arbitrate between us. I, for one, will abide by his
decision. The sons of gentlemen and soldiers will not do wrong to a
soldier and a stranger!"

Then from the darkest and most distant corner, where he had sat wrapped
in his great striped mantle with the cape drawn close about his head,
rose a man of a little past the middle years of life, his black beard
showing only a few threads of grey, where the tell-tale wisdom tuft
springs from the under lip.

"Young sir," he said courteously, "I am an Old Castilian from
Valladolid. I will hear your cause of quarrel, and, if you so desire,
advise my compatriots, if they in their turn will consent to put their
case into my hands."

There was some demur at this among the rougher gipsies and muleteers,
but every one was anxious for the evening meal, and the fragrant earthen
pipkins and great iron central pot gave forth a good smell. Also a
red-waistcoated man-servant ran hither and thither among them,
whispering in the ear of each belligerent; and his communication, having
presumably to do with the stranger's quality and condition, had a
remarkable effect in casting oil upon the waters. Indeed, the Migueletes
had withdrawn as soon as the Castilian came forward, and presently he of
Galicia, having consulted with his fellows, answered that for his part
he was quite prepared to submit the causes of strife to the noble
cavalier from Valladolid, provided the stranger also would abide by the
decision.

"I have said so," put in the Scot fiercely, "and _my_ custom is not to
make a promise at night for the purpose of breaking it in the morning!"




CHAPTER IV

A LITTLE COMB-CUTTING


By his accent of defiance, the Scot evidently considered that he had
made a personal point here, but the Old Castilian gravely passed the
insult over.

"Will the Senor state his case?" he said, bowing to the young man.

"I came to this venta, the proprietor of which, and all his relations,
may God confound for liars and thieves! When I entered I paid for one
week's good straw and barley in coined silver of Mexico. The unshorn
villain stole the feed from under my horse's nose so soon as my back was
turned, and then to-night, upon my complaining, set his rascal scullions
on to vilify my country, or at least a country which, if not mine, is
yet no concern of his or theirs. Whereupon I tendered to all the cleaner
of them my cartel, offering to fight them with any weapon they might
name, and in any place, for the honour of Scotland and the Presbyterian
religion!"

Though he had never heard of either of these last, the grey-bearded
umpire gravely wagged his head at the statement of the Scot, nodded in
acknowledgment, and turned with equal gravity and distinction to the
Gallegan as the representative of the opposite faction. He motioned him
to proceed.

"This man," said the Galician, speaking in the harsh stuttering whisper
affected by these Iberian hewers of wood and drawers of water, "this man
for these ten days past hath given all in the _Venta_ bad money and
worse talk. To-day he would have cheated _Dueno_, and we, like true men,
took up the cudgels for the good patron."

"Hear the bog-trotting cowards lie!" cried the Scot, fiercely. "Save for
the barley, I paid no money, good or bad. All I had remains here in my
belt. If I gave bad money, let him produce it. And, save in the matter
of his beast's provend, who gives money at the entering in of a hotel?"

"Least of all a Scot," put in the Englishman, who had been following
with some difficulty the wordy warfare.

"Then because he would not exchange good money for the bad, and because
of his words, which carried stings, we challenged him to fight, and he
fought. That, worthy Senor, is the beginning of the matter, and the
end."

"Sir," said the Scot to the Old Castilian, "there was no question of
money. None brought my reckoning to me----"

"No," sighed the landlord, from beyond the bottle-encumbered counter
where he had taken refuge, "because he threatened to let daylight into
the vitals of the man who carried it to him."

"But as to the insults to his country?" asked the old Castilian, "you
ought to have borne in mind that for that cause will a man fight quicker
than for his sweetheart."

"So it is, Senor, we deny it not," answered the Gallegan; "yet this
fellow, after abusing the English and their land till there were no more
ill words in the language, turned upon us because we chanced to agree
with him, outs with his pocket-book and deals round what he calls
'cartels of defiance' as if he dealt a hand at ombre. Then, after some
give and take of ill words, as your honour knows the custom is, he pulls
his blade upon us, and makes play as you saw. We are poor fellows, and
know no more than how to defend ourselves. And if we fight, our custom
is to do it with a couple of Albacete knives before half the town, and
be done with it. But this stranger was all for duels, and seconds, and
codes of honour, after the mode of Paris."

"And a very excellent thing too, sir," said the Old Castilian, smiling
at the Scot, "but in their due place, and their place is hardly in the
kitchen of the venta of San Vicencio. Listen to me. My finding is this.
You will all shake hands, after an apology given and received in the
matter of the stranger's country, and since he has paid no reckoning
these ten days according to his own statement, the which I believe, he
shall defray his count so soon as it shall be presented to him by the
host. Are you agreed?"

"Agreed!" said the Gallegan, holding out his hand to the Scot, "and I
regret, on behalf of myself and my companions, that we ever said aught
to the discredit of England, the very distinguished country of which the
Senor stranger is a native."

The Scot shrugged his shoulders in the French manner, but nevertheless
held out his hand with some show of heartiness.

"I am no citizen of England, thank God," he said, "I own no such
pock-pudding land, but it will be a heavy day when Rollo Blair of Castle
Blair, in the good shire of Fife, sits still with his hands in his
pockets and hears a garlic-eating Frenchman abuse the English, with
whom his forbears fought so many good fights."

"I thank you on behalf of my country for your championship, such as it
is," said the stout Englishman, smiling; "things that cut and thrust or
go off with a bang, are not in my way. But if my knuckles are any good
against the bridge of a man's nose, they shall henceforth be at your
country's service. For the rest, bills of lading and exchanges at thirty
days are more in my line."

"Ah," said the young Scot, twirling an almost invisible moustache,
"commerce I know little of. I was bred to the profession of arms. My
good father taught me the sword and the pistol, according to the
practice of the best modern schools. Sergeant McPherson, his orderly,
gave me instruction in the sabre and bayonet. I was intended for a
commission in the 77th, my father's old regiment, when a pecuniary loss,
the result of an unfortunate speculation, broke my poor father's heart
and sent me out to seek my fortune with no more than Robin Fleeming's
sword and my right arm."

"Poor capital to start on," said the Englishman, in his bluff manner, as
he examined the article in question; "now you do not happen to write a
good round hand, do you?"

The Scot started and laid his hand on his sword hilt.

"Sir," he cried, "your avocations do not permit you to understand how
great an insult you offer to a gentleman!"

"Oh," said the other, "I don't know at all that you would have suited.
Our manager down at Barcelona is a very particular man; but then I would
have said a good word for you, and being the owner's son----"

"Say no more of the matter, I beg of you," said the Scot, haughtily. "I
have not yet been reduced to the necessity of choosing a mercantile
career."

"And that is a most fortunate thing for you," quoth the Englishman, with
the utmost gravity.

"Eh?" said the Scot, somewhat surprised, and, being occupied with his
own thoughts and with keeping an eye on the door, not exactly taking the
Englishman's meaning, "Oh, you were speaking of a mercantile career.
Yes, I am indeed fortunate in that my lines have been cast in pleasanter
places than before a ream of foolscap on a desk."

"It pays well, though," said the other placidly.

"For me, I care nothing for money," said Rollo Blair. "Eh! what is
this?"

He wheeled round quickly in response to a tap upon his arm, and the
Englishman, looking at him keenly (though apparently intently regarding
the opposite wall), saw him turn visibly paler.

The landlord was at Master Rollo Blair's elbow with the reckoning
written out upon a long sheet of paper. A couple of serving men, who
were probably privy to the extravagant total, stood sniggering and
whispering in a neighbouring archway. The Gallegan and his companions
sat crossing their legs and gossiping watchfully, darting inquisitive
glances under their brows at their late adversary, to see how he would
bear himself. Only that noble gentleman, the Old Castilian, sipped his
chocolate unmoved, and, with the perfection of good manners, stared at
the fire.

From red to white, and from white back again to a kind of greenish
paleness, went and came the hues of the young man's complexion. The son
of the house of Blair of Blair was manifestly unhappy. He put his hand
in one pocket. He clapped another. His purse was not in either.

"Perchance 'tis in your honour's equipage," suggested the landlord
wickedly; "shall I call your body-servant to bring it?"

It was a face of bitter chagrin that Rollo Blair of Blair lifted to the
Englishman who had meantime never ceased from his study of a fly upon
the wall. He beckoned him a little apart with a look of inimitable
chagrin.

"Sir," he said, "will you buy from me a silver-hilted sword. It was my
grandfather's, and he fought well with it at Killiecrankie. It is the
sole article of value I possess----"

Here a kind of a sob came into his voice. "God knows, I would rather
sell my right hand!" he said brusquely.

"How came you to run up such a bill, having no effects?" said the
Englishman, looking at him coolly, and taking no notice of the young
man's offer of his weapon, which he continued to hold by the scabbard.

"I can hardly tell," said the Scot, hanging his head, "but only two
nights ago there was a young French lord here who out-faced me first at
the cards and then at the drinking of wine. So I was compelled to order
in more and better to be upsides with him!"

"There is no meaner ambition, especially on an empty purse," said the
Englishman, not moving from the angle of wall upon which he leaned.

"Curse me that ever I troubled myself to appeal to a cold-livered
Englishman!" cried the young man, "I will go to the Castilian over
yonder. He looks as if he might have the bowels of a man. At least he
will not palm off a gentleman in distress with moral precepts culled
from last week's sermon!"

The Englishman leaped forward and clapped the hot-headed Scot on the
shoulder. With the other hand he drew a well-filled wallet, with a
mercantile calendar slipped into the band, from his pocket.

"There," he said, heartily, "let me be your banker. 'Tis worth a score
of reckonings to hear a Scotsman speak disrespectfully of sermons. My
name is John Mortimer----"

"Of the Mortimers of Plas Gwynedd in Caernarvonshire? Why, my
grandmother was of that----" Rollo Blair was beginning a genealogical
disquisition with great eagerness when the Englishman stopped him.

"No," he said, "at least not that I know of. My father made mouse-traps
before he took to cotton-spinning, and I never so much as heard whether
I had any grandfather. I am plain John Mortimer of Chorley at your
service. I think you are an honest lad, sorely led astray by whimsies in
the brain, but you are honest, and in a far land. You are welcome to my
purse and, credit to any reasonable amount which will put you in the way
of repaying your obligation, as I am sure you desire to do."

"I shall not sleep sound at night till I do," returned the youth,
firmly. "But first I desire to inform you that I have had an ill opinion
of your nation--an opinion to which, in spite of your great personal
kindness and the obligation under which you place me, I am bound to
adhere."

The Englishman nodded carelessly.

"There speaks an honest man, but also a foolish one!" said Mortimer,
shaking his head; "you should try the foreign wine trade for a year or
two. It is wonderfully curbing to a man's vocabulary!"

The Scot stood a moment at gaze, manifestly debating with himself.

"And you will not accept of my sword?" he said. "I assure you it is
worth enough to discharge my small liabilities twice over."

"Swords are not legal tender in the wine business," said the other,
smiling, "nor yet when I go home with a knowledge of languages to help
sell my father's grey cloth! You are as welcome as my brother to the
loan," he added, "and I promise you I will accept repayment as gladly
from you as from him."

"You make the matter easier indeed," said Rollo Blair, recovering his
spirits with a bound. "Here, landlord, can you change this gold ounce,
or is the matter too great a one for your petty venta?"

The young men had been standing a little back, in the shadow of one of
the arches, in which were empty mangers and the rings of head-stalls, so
that the patron could not observe the passing of the Englishman's purse
from hand to hand.

"Your servant, Senor!" said the innkeeper, no Spaniard, but a French Jew
of Roussillon, "what can I have the honour of ordering for your
excellencies' supper?"

"Order yourself out of my sight!" cried the Scot imperiously. "We are
going up to the monastery to dine with my uncle the Abbot!"

The patron of the venta fell back a couple of steps, and the two serving
men ceased to grin and instead bowed most obsequiously.

"He is a nephew of the Abbot, perhaps (who knows) his son! There will be
fine doings out of this night's work, if he tells Don Baltasar all, as
he doubtless will."

This was the whispered comment of one servitor in the ear of his master.
Said the other--

"Speak him fair, patron, for the love of God! For if the monks are
adverse, we are sped. Our pipe is as good as out. And perchance a yet
worse thing may happen!"

And he leaned over till his lips almost touched mine host's ear.

"My God!" gasped the latter, "what a country! Would that I were safe
back again in mine own house with green blinds in Roussillon!"

The Englishman and the Scot were now walking amicably arm in arm to and
fro in front of the inn. The Scot had quite recovered his military
demeanour, and again twirled his moustache with an air. The
silver-hilted sword shone no brighter on the morn of Killiecrankie. The
unused spurs tinkled melodiously.

The landlord stood with his hands deferentially folded. The young men
took not the faintest notice of him, but continued to pace slowly to and
fro.

Mine host of the venta of Montblanch cleared his throat. The Scot cast a
single scornful glance at him, which he caught as a dog catches a bone.

"My most noble lords," he said, "I trust that the unfortunate occurrence
of this evening will not prevent this house from having your honours'
custom in the future, and that you too will say no word of all this to
the most reverend Abbot Don Baltasar!"

"Make yourself easy on that score," said the Scot; "as soon as we are
round the corner we will forget that such a refuge for fleabitten
knaves anywhere exists out of Pandemonium!"

Lower still bowed the obsequious patron, for this was his idea of the
way a gentleman should speak to an innkeeper. Abuse showed his quality.

"Shall I order a carriage to convey your honours up to the Abbey?" said
the landlord, preparing to take his leave. "I know a patron, who has a
coach-and-six!"

"We will walk on our feet," replied the Scot, no whit abashed, "ah--in
pursuance of a vow made at Salamanca!"

The landlord withdrew, making an obeisance that was almost an oriental
salaam.

"But is the Abbot really your uncle?" inquired the Englishman, as they
set out.

"As much as you are," said the Scot, "but all the same we shall dine
with him, or my name is not Rollo Blair of Blair Castle in the shire of
Fife!"

"The Lord send it," said the Englishman devoutly; "perhaps in that case
he will part with his Priorato wine a farthing the gallon cheaper!"




CHAPTER V

THE ABBEY OF MONTBLANCH


The great monastery of Montblanch was of regal, nay almost of imperial
dignity. Though no emperor (as at Yuste) had here laid aside the world
and assumed the cowl, yet mighty Kings of Aragon and Navarra lay buried
within its walls, and its long line of mitred abbots included many in
whose veins ran the royal blood of all the Spains.

Almost completely encircled by wild sierras, it was yet situated upon a
plain, as it were let into the very heart of the mountains. A clear
trout stream, which furnished many a Friday's breakfast to the monks,
ran through a rich vale. Of no place within fifty leagues, could it be
so truly said, that all about it and above it there was heard a sound of
many waters.

Of the various potencies and pre-eminences of Montblanch, civil and
ecclesiastical, there was no end. A hundred villages owned its lordship.
The men were serfs, the women handmaids. Soul and body they were bound
to their masters of the monastery of Montblanch. Without permission they
dared neither to wed nor to bury, neither to increase nor to multiply,
to lay the bride on the bride-bed nor the corpse upon the bier.

Nor, to thrill the listener's blood, were darker tales awanting,
whispered with a quiver of the flesh, as men crouched closer about the
glowing charcoal pan, and women glanced fearfully out between the green
lattice strips at the twinkling lights of the Abbey, set high above them
under the silent stars.

It was said, not openly indeed, but rather with an awestruck lowering of
the voice and fearful glances to right and left, that when the
inquisition was done away with in the Spain of the cities and provinces,
the chiefs of the Holy Office had found a last place of refuge beneath
the grey rocks of Montblanch, and that whoso offended against the monks
of the mountain, or refused to them flock or herd, son or daughter,
sooner or later entered the doors of the monastery never to be visible
again in the light of day.

So at least ran the tale, and as the two young men made their way upward
from San Vicencio, by the mountain path beside which the stream brattled
and sulked alternate, Rollo Blair told these things to the Englishman as
one who half believed them.

"It is not possible," answered the latter scornfully; "this is no
century in which such things can be done. Has civilisation not reached
as far as Aragon? Who talks of the rack and the inquisition at this time
of day?"

The young Scot halted a sturdy peasant who came whistling down the path,
a bundle of tough reed stems over his shoulder.

"Did you ever hear of the black room of the monastery of Montblanch?" he
said, pinching the man's blue overall between finger and thumb.

The sunburnt Aragonese crossed himself and was silent.

"Speak, have you heard?"

The other nodded, and made with his digits that "fig of Spain" which
averts the evil eye; but under his loose blouse half furtively as if
ashamed of his precaution.

"I have heard!" he said, and was silent.

"Do you wish to enter it?" said Rollo.

"God forbid!" quoth the man with conviction.

"And why?" pursued the Scot, wishful to make his point.

"Because of those who go in thither, no one ever comes out."

The man, having thus spoken, hastened to betake himself out of sight,
his feet, shod with sandals of esparto grass, pad-padding from side to
side of the narrow mountain path.

"You see," said Rollo Blair, "mine uncle, reverend man, is no favourite
in his own district."

It was now drawing towards evening, and the rich orange glow
characteristic of northern Iberia deepened behind the hills, while the
bushes of the wayside grew indistinct and took on mysterious shapes on
either side.

"My object in coming to Spain is simple," said the Englishman, of whom
his companion had asked a question. "Before my father retires and
confides to me his spinning mills at Chorley, he stipulates that I shall
make by my own exertions a clear profit of a thousand pounds. I, on my
part, have agreed neither to marry nor to return till I can do so with a
thousand pounds thus acquired in my hand. I thought I could make it as
easily in the wine business as in any other of which I had no knowledge.
And so, here I am!" concluded the young man.

"Lord," cried Blair, "if my father had insisted on any such conditions
with me, he would have made me a wandering Jew for life, and a
perpetual bachelor to boot! A thousand pounds! Great Saint Andrew, I
would as soon think of getting to heaven by my own merits!"

"Spoken like an excellent Calvinist!" cried the Englishman. "But how
came you into this country, and can you in any way assist me in the
buying of good vintages, out of which I may chance to make profit?
Besides the firm's credit, I have a private capital of one hundred
pounds, of which at present eight or nine are in a friend's hands!"

"Good Lord!" cried the Scot, "then I by my folly have put you by so much
farther from your happiness. But of course you have a sweetheart waiting
for you on your return?"

"I have yet to see the woman I would give a brass farthing to marry, or
for whose mess of connubial pottage I would sell my good bachelor's
birthright."

"Fegs," said Rollo Blair, gazing with admiration upon his shorter
companion, and, as was his wont when excited, relapsing into dialect,
"the shoe has aye pinched the ither foot wi' me, my lad. No to speak o'
Peggy Ramsay, I think I hae been disappointed by as mony as a round
dozen o' lasses since I shook off the dust o' the Lang Toon o'
Kirkcaldy."

"Disappointed?" queried his companion, "how so, man? Did you not please
the maids?"

"Oh, aye, it wasna that," returned the squire of Fife, taking his
companion's arm confidentially; "the lasses, to do justice to their good
taste, were maistly willing eneuch. There's something aboot a lang man
like me that tak's them, the craiturs, and I hae a way o' my ain wi'
them, though I never gat mair schooling than my father could thrash into
me wi' a dog whip. But the fact is that aye afore the thing gaed far
eneuch, I cam to words wi' some brither or faither o' the lass, and
maybe put a knife into him, or as it were an ounce o' lead, I wadna
wonder--to improve his logic."

"In other words you are quarrelsome?" said Mortimer shortly.

The Scot removed his hand from the Englishman's arm and drew himself to
his full height.

"There" he said, "I beg to take issue with you, sir! Argumentative I may
be, and it is my nature, but to the man who flings it in my teeth that I
am of a quarrelsome disposition, I have but one answer. Sir, receive my
card!"

And with great gravity he pulled from his pocket an ancient card-case of
damaged silver, bulged and dinted out of all shape, opened it, and burst
into a loud laugh.

"I declare I have not one left! I spent them all on those Aragonese dogs
down there, who thought, I daresay, that they were soup tickets on the
_frailuchos'_ kitchen up above. And anyway it is heaven's own truth, I
_am_ a quarrelsome, ungrateful dog! But forgive me, Mr. Mortimer, it is
my nature, and at any rate it does not last long. I am not yet of those
'that age and sullens have,' as my father used to say. A desperate wise
man my father, and well read! I would have learned more from him if I
had not preferred Sergeant McPherson and the stables, to the study and
my father's Malacca cane about my shoulders each time I made a false
quantity."

"But you have not answered my question," said the Englishman. "I am here
to buy wines. I am above all anxious to take over to England some
thousand hectolitres of the famous Priorato of Montblanch, and any
other vintages that will suit the English market."

"But how on a hundred pounds can you expect to do so much?" asked the
Scot, with an unlooked-for exhibition of native caution.

"Oh, I have enough credit for anything that I may buy on account of the
firm. The hundred is my own private venture, and it struck me that with
your command of the language and my knowledge of business, we might be
able to ship some Spanish wines to the Thames on very favourable terms.
I should of course be glad to pay you the usual commission."

"Vintages and commissions and shipments are so much Greek to me," said
Rollo Blair; "but if I can do anything to lessen the weight of
obligement under which you have placed me, you can count on my services.
I am scarce such a fool as my tongue and temper make me out sometimes!
You are the only man alive I have tried to pick a quarrel with and
failed."

"I think we shall do very well together yet," said Mortimer; "the usual
commission is five per cent, on all transactions up to a hundred
pounds--above that, seven and a half."

"Damn you and your commissions, sir," cried Blair, hotly. "Did I not
tell you I would do my best, on the honour of a Scottish gentleman!"

"Very likely," returned the other, dryly; "but I have always found the
benefit of a clear and early understanding between partners."

They had been gradually ascending the narrow path which wound through
clumps of rosemary, broom, thyme, and bay-tree laurel to a sheltered
little plain, much of it occupied by enclosed gardens and the vast
white buildings of the monastery itself.

The moon, almost full but with a shaving off its right-hand side which
kept it a full hour late, shone behind the two adventurers as they stood
still a moment to take in the scene.

Pallid limestone pinnacles rose high into serene depths of indigo, in
which the stars twinkled according to their size and pre-eminence,
nearer and farther, gradually retiring into infinite space. In the
clefts high up were black tufts of trees, that seemed from below like so
many gooseberry bushes. A kind of three days' stubble of beard covered
the plain itself right up to the monastery wall, while here and there
was heard the continuous tinkle of many goat bells as the leaders
alternately strayed and cropped the herbage between the boulders.

Stretching from side to side was the white abbey, not so much imposing
for architectural beauty, but because of its vast size, its Titanic
retaining walls and multitude of windows, now mere splashed oblongs of
darkness irregularly scattered along the white walls. Only at one end
the chapel was lit up, and from its windows of palest gold, and Madonna
blue, and ruby red, came the sweet voices of children beginning to sing
the evening hymn as it stands in the Breviary for the use of the
faithful in the arch-diocese of Tarragona--

    "Rosasque miscens liliis.
    Aram vetustam contegit."




CHAPTER VI

BROTHER HILARIO


At the great entrance gate they paused, uncertain which way to turn, for
from the windows of the chapel a bright light shone forth upon the grey
waste without, whitening alike the dark green creepers of the juniper
and the pale yellow spears of the restless broom. But a chance encounter
decided the matter for them.

"Well, ah, my good sometime enemy," cried a shrill eager voice, "have
you forgotten Etienne de Saint Pierre, and how we are to fight below the
windmill at Montmartre the first time you come to Paris?"

"Lord, it is the hare-brained Frenchman!" cried Rollo, yet with some
glow of pleasure in his face. The very talk of fighting stirred him.

"Then there are a pair of you!" said John Mortimer, quietly, like a man
dropping his fly into a pool on a clear evening.

"Eh, what's that?" angrily cried the Scot, but was diverted from further
inquiry by the sight of a figure that darted forward out of the darkness
of the wall.

A smallish slender man, dressed in a costume which would have recalled
the Barber of Seville, had it not been for the ecclesiastical robe that
surmounted and as it were extinguished its silken gorgeousness. A great
cross of gold set with jewels swung at the young man's breast and was
upheld by links as large as those which sustain a lord mayor's badge of
office.

"Ah, I have renounced the world, my dear adversary," cried the new-comer
enthusiastically, "as you will also. I am no longer Etienne de Saint
Pierre, but Brother Hilario, an unworthy novice of the Convent of the
Virgin of Montblanch!"

"But, sir," cried Rollo Blair, "you cannot take up the religious life
without some small settlement with me. You are trysted to meet me with
the smallsword at the Buttes of Montmartre--you to fight for the honour
of Senorita Concha of Sarria and I to make a hole in your skin for the
sweet sake of little Peggy Ramsay, who broke my heart or ever I left the
bonny woods o' Alyth to wander on this foreign shore!"

"Your claim I allow, my dear Sir Blair," cried the Frenchman, "but the
eternal concerns of the soul come first, and I have been
wicked--wicked--so very wicked--or at least as wicked as my health
(which is indifferent) would allow. But the holy Prior--the abbot--mine
uncle, hath shown me the error of my ways!"

John Mortimer turned directly round till he faced the speaker.

"Odds bobs," he cried, "then after all there is a pair of them. _He is
this fellow's uncle too!_"

The Frenchman gazed at him amazed for a moment. Then he clapped his hand
fiercely on the place where his sword-hilt should have been, crying, "I
would have you know, Monsieur, that the word of a Saint Pierre is
sacred. I carry in my veins the blood of kings!"

And he grappled fiercely for the missing sword-hilt, but his fingers
encountering only the great jewelled cross of gold filigree work, he
raised it to his lips with a sudden revulsion of feeling.

    "Torrentes iniquitatis conturbaverunt me.
    Dolores inferni circumdederunt me."

He spoke these words solemnly, shaking his head as he did so.

"What! still harping on little Dolores?" cried Blair; "I thought little
Concha was your last--before Holy Church, I mean."

The little Frenchman was beneath the lamps and he looked up at the long
lean Scot with a peculiarly sweet smile.

"Ah, you scoff," he said, "but you will learn--yes, you will learn. My
uncle, the Prior, will teach you. He will show you the Way, as he has
done for me!"

"It may be so," retorted the Scot, darkly; "I only wish I could have a
chance at him. I think I could prove him all in the wrong about
transubstantiation--that is, if I could keep my temper sufficiently
long.

"But," he added, "if it be a fair question to put to a novice and a holy
man, how about the divine right of kings that you talked so much of only
a week ago, and especially what of Don Carlos, for whom you came to
fight?"

"Ah, my good cousin Carlos, my dear cousin," cried Etienne Saint Pierre,
waving his hands in the air vehemently, "his cause is as dear and sacred
to this heart as ever. But now I will use in his behalf the sword of the
Spirit instead of the carnal weapon I had meant to draw, in the cause of
the Lord's anointed. I will _pray_ for the success of his arms night
and morning."

At this moment the colloquy at the abbey gate was broken up by a
somewhat stout man, also in the garb of a novice, a long friar's robe
being girt uncomfortably tight about his waist. In his hand he held a
lantern.

"Monsieur--Brother Hilario, I mean--a thousand devils run away with me
that ever I should speak such a shake-stick name to my master--the Holy
Prior wishes to speak with you, and desires to know whether you would
prefer a capon of Zaragoza or two Bordeaux pigeons in your _olla_
to-night?"

"Come, that is more promising," cried the Scot; "we will gladly accept
of your invitation to dine with you and your uncle, and give him all the
chance he wants to convert me to the religious life. We accept with
pleasure--pleased, I am sure, to meet either the Saragossan capon or the
two Bordeaux pigeons!"

"Invitation!" cried the astonished Brother Hilario. "Did I invite you?
If so, I fear I took a liberty. I do not remember the circumstance."

"Do you doubt my word!" cried the Scot, with instant frowning
truculence. "I say the invitation was implied if not expressed, and by
the eyes of Peggy Ramsay, if you do not get us a couple of covers at
your uncle's table to-night, I will go straight to the Holy Prior and
tell him all that I know of little Concha of Sarria, and your plot to
carry her off--a deal more, I opine, than you included in your last
confession, most high-minded friar!"

"That was before my renunciation of the flesh," cried Saint Pierre,
manifestly agitated.

The Scot felt his elbow touched.

"I was under her balcony with a letter last Friday, no further gone,
sir," whispered the novice in the cord-begirt robe; "blessed angels help
me to get this nonsense out of his head, or it will be the death of us,
and we will never night-hawk it on the Palais Royal again!"

"And on what pious principles do you explain the love-letter you sent
last Friday!" said Rollo, aloud. "What if I were to put it into the
hands of your good uncle the Prior? If that were to happen, I warrant
you would never ride on one of the white abbey mules in the garb of the
brothers of Montblanch!"

The stout novice rubbed his hands behind his master's back, and grinned
from ear to ear. But the effect upon Saint Pierre was not quite what
Rollo intended.

Instead of being astonished and quailing at his acuteness, the young
Frenchman suddenly fired up in the most carnal and unmonkish fashion.

"You have been making love to my little Concha yourself, you dirty Scots
rogue! I will have your life, monsieur! Guard yourself!"

"'_Your_ Concha'--do you say, Master Friar?" cried Blair; "and pray who
gave you a right to have Conchas on your hands with the possessive
adjective before them? Is that permit included in your monkish articles
of association? Is adoration of pretty little Conchas set down in black
and red in your breviaries? Answer me that, sir!"

"No matter, monsieur," retorted the Frenchman; "I was a man before I was
a monk. Indeed, in the latter capacity I am not full-fledged yet. And I
hold you answerable if in anything you have offended against the lady
you have named, or used arts to wile her heart from me!"

"I give you my word I never set eyes on the wench--but from what I
hear----"

"Stop there," cried the second novice; "be good enough to settle that
question later. For me, I must go back promptly with the answer about
the capon of Zaragoza and the two Bordeaux pigeons!"

The Scot looked at the Frenchman. The Frenchman looked at the Scot.

"As a compliment to the fair lady the Senorita Concha, say to my uncle
the capon, Francois!" said the lover.

"And as a compliment to yourself, my dear Brother Hilario, say to his
lordship _also_ the two Bordeaux pigeons!"

"_And_ the pigeons, Francois!" quoth the latest addition to the
brotherhood of Montblanch, with perfect seriousness.




CHAPTER VII

THE ABBOT'S DINNER


Rollo Blair kept his gasconnading promise. He dined with "his uncle,"
the abbot, that most wise, learned, and Christian prelate, Don Baltasar
Varela.

The abbot of Montblanch was glad to see Milord of Castle Blair in the
land of the Scots. It was not a Christian country, he had been informed.

"Then your venerability has been misinformed," cried Rollo, who thirsted
for argument with the high ecclesiastic upon transubstantiation,
consubstantiation, and all the other "ations" of his creed. But the
Abbot parried him neatly at the very first assault, by an inquiry as to
what he thought of _transverberacion_.

At this Rollo gasped, and found immediate occasion to change the subject
to the famous wine of the Abbey, _el Priorato_, while the little
Frenchman beamed appreciation of his uncle's ecclesiastical learning,
and that wise prelate twirled his thumbs about each other and discoursed
at large, his shrewd unfathomable grey eyes now fixed on one and now on
another of the company, as though he were fathoming them severally with
some infallible mental gauge, by which he could calculate their measure
of capacity to a hair.

Costly wines were on the table. Silver and cut glass of Venice sparkled
on spotless cloth. Silent-sandalled lay brethren of the Order waited on
the Prior and his guests. Course after course was brought in, discussed,
and removed. The Abbot, Don Baltasar Varela, himself ate little. He
watched his guests' appetites, however, with manifest interest, and
directed the servitors with almost imperceptible movements of his hand.
He appeared to favour each one of the three equally.

Yet an observer as detached as Don Baltasar himself would have detected
that the chief part of his attention was given to the young man, Rollo
Blair, and that the Prior, with a gently subtle smile, kept murmuring to
himself at each quick retort and flash of repartee.

"'Fiery as a Scot' indeed! A true proverb! This fellow is the man we
want, if so we can pay his price. The others----"

And Don Baltasar shrugged his shoulders slightly and contemptuously, as
he glanced from the broad stolid features of John Mortimer of Chorley to
the bright volatile countenance of his nephew Etienne, Count of Saint
Pierre--though, as we know, in so doing he did much injustice to two men
very brave after their kind, albeit their kind was not that for which
the Prior of Montblanch happened to be presently on the outlook.

Rollo never emptied his glass (and he did so frequently) but one of
Abbot Baltasar's eyelids quivered, and the glass was immediately filled
again.

Thus supplied with inspiration the stream of the youth's conversation
flowed steadily. His tones rose till they dominated the table. His
vocabulary expanded, and as he had learned his Castilian in strange
places, his occasional freedom of expression bore somewhat heavily upon
the lay brothers, who, fearful of the watchful grey eye of their
superior, dared not so much as to smile behind their hands.

As Rollo's tongue loosened and his heart enlarged, the Prior with a
twitch of his thumb indicated that the doors were to be closed, and
turned again to give yet graver and more courteous attention to the
conversation of his guest.

Master Blair's muse was the historical--and, alas! the autobiographical.

"Through his sword-arm I sent Killiecrankie, which is a better blade
than any ever forged at Toledo--as I, Rollo Blair, stand ready to affirm
and make good upon any man every day of the week!"

"I agree," said John Mortimer, "'tis better than my only razor, which is
an infernally bad piece of metal, and not fit to scrape a hog with!"

"And _I_ agree," sighed Etienne, "because the remainder of my life I
have resolved to devote to contemplation upon holy things. _Vade retro
me, Satana!_"

The Scot turned upon him like a flash.

"_You_ have renounced the world"--he queried--"did I hear you say?"

The Frenchman nodded. "And its vanities!" he agreed with a twirl of his
chain.

"Since Friday night, I presume?" Again began the fateful questioning, at
which Mortimer kicked Rollo severely under the table. The poor novice
and martyr to monarchial principles flushed visibly. He was afraid of
what the mad Scot might say next. But at that very moment of danger
Rollo curbed his tongue. He would not let the name of little Concha pass
his lips. Still the novice in his uncle's presence was game too
excellent to let slip easily.

"Contemplation!" he laughed aloud, "you will, you say, pass your days in
contemplation. The relics of the saints will serve you from this day
forth, most gentle penitent. Why, man, you should go straight to
Cologne. They have the bones of eleven thousand virgins there, I am
told. These might chance to serve you some while!"

"Speaking of relics," said the abbot, rising, to prevent further
awkwardness of discourse, "there is a midnight celebration which it is
my duty to attend, but do not let that disturb you from finishing your
wine. Son Hilario, I absolve you from attendance, that you may keep
these friends of yours in company. When you are weary, touch this bell,
and Father Anselmo, my confessor, will show you the treasures and
reliquaries of the Abbey--the former, alas! now scanty, since the visit
of your compatriots, Messire Etienne, who came in the year eight, with
their unhallowed melting-pots. But there are as many relics as ever,
praise be to the saints--mostly stones. There is never any lack of
stones at Montblanch, though sometimes we poor anchorites of the Virgin
may chance to lack bread."

As he spoke he looked about at the well-laden table, the bursting figs,
the bunches of purple grapes, the shining silver and snowy linen.

"_Benedicite_, good gentlemen!" he said, and went out with bowed head
and a rustle of flowing robe.

"But the wine--the wine! You have forgotten the wine!" cried John
Mortimer, suddenly remembering his purpose in coming to Montblanch.

"_Ma foi!_" exclaimed Brother Hilario, "has the Englishman not yet had
enough! I have heard of how these islanders drink, but this passes
credit."

"Ay, it cowes Kirkcaldy!" cried Rollo. "He is indeed a maisterfu'
drinker, this Englishman!"

"What?" queried the Frenchman, still mystified, and moving towards the
decanters. "Does he want more wine? How much would satisfy him, think
you?"

"I could take somewhere about sixty thousand gallons at present, and as
much more in a week or two!" said Mortimer, pulling out his pocket-book.

The Frenchman looked at Rollo for enlightenment. Our insular measures of
capacity were naturally strange to him.

"About twenty thousand _arrobas_ at present might satisfy him, he says,
but he would like more in a week or two!"

Monsieur Etienne de Saint Pierre fell back, lax with astonishment.

"_Mon Dieu!_" he cried, "I never believed it before, but I see now it is
true. An Englishman bathes himself, and drinks the contents of his bath
when he is finished. It is that he may be ready for the twenty thousand
_arrobas_ of Priorato! But you are pleased to jest, gentlemen, is it not
so?"

The matter was explained.

"I can arrange that with my uncle," said Etienne, as soon as he fully
understood John Mortimer's purpose; "I understand something about wines,
for I grow some square leagues of vines on my lands in France. Moreover,
I will see to it that your friend does not pay too high a price for the
Priorato! And now for the relics! We have already wasted too much time."

He rang the bell and called in the abbot's confessor.

Father Anselmo was a gaunt, severe man, of more than the average height,
with black hair streaked with grey, and fixed and stony eyes. With him
there appeared a younger and more jovial monk, with small eyes that
perpetually twinkled, and a smile that seemed to catch itself up as with
a click each time that the stern gaze of Father Anselmo turned his way.
This monk was evidently only a novice, or a lay brother on his
probation, for he wore the lesser habit and carried in his hand a great
bunch of keys, which he tinkled freely, as if in that silent place he
took a certain pleasure in the sound.

Father Anselmo gazed with severe disapproval upon the rich appointments
of the abbot's table, and austerely refused for himself and his
companion any refreshment beyond a glass of cold water.

But on the other hand the eyes of the keybearer perused with evident
longing every salver and decanter. Whereupon the wild Scot, being
restrained by no scruples, religious or otherwise, passed him first of
all a glass of wine behind his superior's back, which he drank at a gulp
without a sound, his eyes all the while on the lean rounded shoulders of
the father confessor.

A full bottle of wine followed and was instantly concealed beneath the
novice's long robe. A plate of grapes, half a dozen pears, a loaf of
wheaten bread, all were passed to him one by one, and as swiftly and
silently disappeared, none being bold enough to guess whither.

"By the Lord, I'll try him with a whole melon," muttered Rollo; "I
believe that, swollen as he is, he could stow away a keg of butter quite
comfortably."

But before he could put this jovial son of Peter the keybearer to the
test, Father Anselmo had gathered his robes ascetically about him, and
signed to the abbot's guests to follow him to the reliquary chamber.




CHAPTER VIII

SANCTUARY


The severe confessor solemnly preceded them, a candle in his hand. Rollo
thought that Father Anselmo had the air of perpetually assisting at an
excommunication, a burning of heretics, or other extreme disciplinary
ceremony of Holy Church. His inferior, the bearer of the Petrine keys,
dimpled behind him, rattling the wards vigorously to hide any tendency
of the bottle of wine to make music of its own in his ample skirts.

The treasury of Montblanch had indeed been most grievously despoiled by
the French, according to the immemorial custom of that most Christian
nation upon its campaigns, and only the most used dishes were now of
silver or silver gilt. All the rest were of homely pewter silvered
over--which, as the confessor said, resembled most men's characters, in
that they looked well enough from a distance, and on the whole served
just as well. He surveyed the company of young men so meaningly as he
said this, that the Scot was only restrained from challenging him on the
spot, by the pressure of John Mortimer's arm upon one side, and an
almost tearful expression of entreaty on Brother Hilario's face upon the
other.

The Confessor selected two keys from the bunch and inserted them into a
couple of locks in a small iron door at the foot of certain gloomy
steps.

The Scot who was imaginative, thought that he could discern some faint
stirrings of life about his feet. Accordingly he stamped once or twice,
having an instinctive hatred of little creeping vermin, which (with
wasps) were the only things he feared in heaven or earth.

But the faint stirring ceasing, he grew interested in watching Father
Anselmo and the novice bearing simultaneously on the keys, which turned
together quite suddenly. Then the Confessor touched a spring concealed
behind some drapery and the door opened.

A former visitor, Marshal Souchy, had obtained the same privilege by
tying the late Abbot up by the thumbs till he gave the order for the
treasury to be opened. In the despatches which he forwarded to his
imperial master this fact appeared in the following form: "After half an
hour's persuasion the Abbot of Montblanch decided to give up his
treasures to your officers, and to celebrate a solemn service in
thanksgiving for the arrival in Aragon of the delivering armies of his
Majesty the Emperor."

The paucity of treasures of silver and gold in the treasury of
Montblanch was, however, more than made up for by the extraordinary
number of relics of saints which the monastery possessed. It was at this
point that the novice, who appeared to act as a kind of showman in
ordinary to the vaults, took up his tale.

"Brother Atanasio, do your duty!" the Confessor had said with a solemn
voice, precisely as if he had been ordering the first turn of the great
wheel of the garotte.

And in words that fairly tumbled over each other with haste the
custodian began his enumeration.

"Here we have a bud from the rod of Aaron--also the body of Aaron
himself; the clasp of the robe of Elijah, the prophet, which Elisha did
not observe when he picked up the mantle--also the aforesaid Elijah and
Elisha; the stone on which the angel sat in the holy sepulchre; the
stone on which holy St. Peter stumbled when he let John outrun him; the
words he said on that occasion, which are not included in Holy Writ, but
were embroidered on a handkerchief by his mother-in-law, probably out of
spite; the stone on which the Sainted Virgin was sitting when the angel
saluted her, the stone on which she sat down to watch the crucifixion;
the stone from Mount Sinai upon which St. Joseph prayed going down to
Egypt; a stone from the house of St. Nicholas, and another from his
sepulchre----"

Athanasius the rosy had only proceeded so far with his enumeration when
a groan came as it were from the ground, and the Scot leaped violently
aside.

"Good God!" he cried, "there is some one suffering down here--through
that door, I think! Open it, you black-a-vised sweep of darkness! I am a
true-blue Presbyterian, I tell you, and I will have no Torquemada
business where Rollo Blair is."

But the dark monk only shook his head, and for the first time smiled.

"The exclamatory stranger is misled by a curious echo, which has given
this place its name. It is called 'The Gate of the Groans,' and our wise
predecessors chose the place for the entrance of their treasure-chamber,
as giving ignorant men the idea that the properties of the Abbey were
protected by demons! I had not, however, hoped that the ingenious little
arrangement would deceive one so wise and experienced as the _caballero_
with the long sword. Our novice, Brother Hilario, will inform his friend
that what I have said is well known in the monastery to be the case!"

"I have heard it so stated," said Etienne, with some reluctance, and
speaking not at all as his monastic name would import.

The groans came again and again, apparently from the earth, and Rollo,
not yet fully convinced, stamped here and there with his foot and
battered the walls with the basket of his sword, till he added a dint or
two to the tasselled hilt of "Killiecrankie." All in vain, however, for
the walls were solid, and the floor beneath his feet rang dull and true.

"Firm as the Rock of Peter," said the Confessor grimly, "on which Holy
Church is built. _Tu es Petrus, et super hanc petram----!_"

"I know that verse," cried the Scot, getting quickly in front of him;
"but I can show you in a quarter of an hour that the Romanist argument
from these words proceeds upon a misconception--if you will do me the
honour to follow me----!"

"Follow _me_!" said the sepulchral monk curtly, and pointing upwards as
the sound of a bell was wafted down to them faintly. "That is the hour
of midnight. Let us attend the call!"

So for that time Rollo's argument against the Romanist doctrine of the
Rock of Peter was shut within him. It was not long, however, before he
had other matters to think of.

They followed their guide through a maze of dark passages, till, with a
sudden "Attention!" he halted them before a door, from the other side of
which came a sound of voices.

The door opened and all the world seemed suddenly filled with clear
singing and glorious light.

Without the least preparation or preface Father Anselmo ushered the
three young men into the great chapel of the order of the Virgin of
Montblanch.

To Rollo it seemed almost an indecency to be thus transported from
stuffy cases of doubtful relics and the chill darkness of earth-smelling
passages, to this place where unseen suppliant voices assailed the Deity
with a perpetual song.

The three youths blinked at the sudden light as they stepped within, and
each of them glanced at their dress, apprehending with the instinct
common to those who find themselves unexpectedly in crowded places, that
it must be disordered. They followed their guide mechanically to the
Holy Water laver. Etienne made the necessary signs and a low reverence
towards the altar. Rollo's devotion to the Presbyterian form of worship
did not prevent his imitating his companion with the easy adaptability
of youth to place and circumstance, but quite unexpectedly they ran upon
a rock in the matter of John Mortimer.

"Do as I do, you obstinate ass!" hissed Rollo in his ear. "Take some of
the water on one finger and make the sign of the cross--that is, if you
want to sleep in an unpricked skin this night!"

"Be hanged if I do," muttered John Mortimer, between his teeth. "I am
not much given to religion myself, but my father is a Primitive
Methodist, and built them a church in Chorley. And I never could look
the old man in the face again if I dotted myself all over with their
heathen holy water!"

"It's little of the Abbot's Priorato you'll ever ship then, my good
friend," muttered Rollo; "but please yourself!"

The Englishman had rooted his heels to the pavement and squared his
hands by his sides as one who would in nowise be dislodged from his
resolve.

"I do not care if I never put a drop of wine into cask," he said,
doggedly. "I won't go back to Chorley after having denied my father's
brand of religion, even if my own vintage is of the poorest."

"There's more ways of killing a cat than choking her with cream!"
growled Rollo; "take this, then, you stiff-necked English deevil!"

And bowing towards the altar, and again towards the Father Confessor,
who had been regarding them with a sinister curiosity, with the utmost
gravity Rollo made certain gestures with his hands, and dipping his
fingers again in the laver, he made the sign of the cross on his
friend's forehead and breast, before the Englishman had time to protest.

"In fulfilment of a vow!" he exclaimed in a whisper to Father Anselmo.
"My companion has promised to St. Vicente Ferrer of Valencia that he
will not make the sign of the cross upon his person till he can do it at
the Basilica of holy St. Peter at Rome. He hath a mortal sin still upon
his conscience."

"Then let him come to me," said the Confessor. "I will deal with him in
a more summary fashion!"

       *       *       *       *       *

It was the season of pilgrimage, and many were the penitents who availed
themselves of the monks' three days statutory hospitality. These were
seated about the dark church on chairs and stools supplied them by the
sacristans, and on two of the latter John Mortimer and Rollo presently
found themselves, while Brother Hilario went off to the gallery reserved
for novices of his standing. Now and then a woman would steal forward
and add a tall candle to the many thousands which burned upon the altar,
or a man kneel at the screen of golden bars beyond which were the
officiating priests and their silently-moving acolytes.

The church lay behind in deep shadow, only the higher lights shining
here on a man's head, and there on a woman's golden ornament. The Abbot
sat to the right in his episcopal robes, with his mitre on a cushion
beside him. A priest stood by this chair with the crozier in his hand.

The brethren of the Order could be seen in their robes occupying the
stalls allotted to them. There was another organ and choir far down the
church, high to the right of the pillar by which the young men sat. The
presence of this second choir was betrayed by a dim illumination
proceeding from behind the fretted balustrade of the loft.

With the quick sympathy of his nature, Rollo, forgetting his sometime
devotion to his native Presbytery, which indeed was chiefly of the
controversial sort, permitted himself to be carried away by the
magnificent swing of the music, the resonance of the twin organs, now
pouring their thunder forth so as to shake at once the hearers'
diaphragms and the fretted roof of blue and gold above them, now sweet
and lonesome as a bird warbling down in Elie meadows in the noon
silences. Anon Rollo shut his eyes and the Chapel of the Virgin of
Montblanch incontinently vanished. He was among the great Congregation
of all the Faithful, he alone without a wedding garment. The place where
he stood seemed filled with surges of aureate light, but the night lay
banked up without, eager and waiting to envelop him, doomed to be for
ever a faithless wandering son of the great Father. Snatches of his
early devotions came ramblingly back to him, prayers his mother had
taught him, Psalms his old nurse had insisted on his learning, or mayhap
crooned about his cradle. Such were the first words which came to him--

    "That man hath perfect blessedness,
      Who walketh not astray,
    In counsel of ungodly men,
      Nor stands in sinners' way."

The impressions, hitherto vivid, blurred themselves at this point. Rollo
Blair was kneeling at his mother's knee. He thought of his first
sweetheart who had nearly made him a minister, and, perchance, a better
man. The night that was waiting imminent outside, silently overleapt the
barriers of golden light. Rollo Blair's head fell forward against a
pillar--and, while the music thundered and wailed alternate, and the
great service swept on its gorgeous way, the wild unhaltered Scot,
soothed by a lullaby of sound, slept the sleep of the young, the tired,
and the heart-free.

How long he slumbered he could not tell, but he was awakened by a
violent thrust in the ribs from the elbow of John Mortimer.

"Great jimminy! what's that? Look, man, look!"

Rollo opened his eyes, bleared with insufficient sleep, and for a long
moment all things danced weirdly before them, as gnats dance in the
light of the moon. He saw dimly without understanding the swinging altar
lamps in a blur of purple haze, the richly-robed priests, the myriad
candles, the dark forms of the worshippers. But now, instead of all eyes
being turned towards the brilliance of the golden altar, it was towards
the door at the dark end of the chapel that they looked.

He could distinguish a tumult of hoarse voices without, multitudinous
angry cries of men, the clatter of feet, the sharp clash of arms. A shot
or two went off quite near at hand.

"Seize him--take the murderer! Hold him!"

The shoutings came clear now to Rollo's brain, and rising to his feet he
half drew his sword, as though he himself had been the hunted man. But
with a smile he let the blade slide back, which it did as easily as a
stone slips into water. For though Killiecrankie's hilt might be
battered, without ribbon or bow-knot, Rollo saw to it that Robin
Fleeming's blade played him no tricks. His life had depended too often
upon it for that, and might again.

Within the chapel of the monastery the service went on almost unheeded,
save by a few of the elders, faithful women whom piety and deafness kept
to their reverence. The men crowded unanimously towards the door outside
which the turmoil waxed wilder and wilder.

Then, shedding to either side a surge of men, as the bow of a swift ship
casts a twin wave to right and left, a man with only scraps of rags
clinging to him rushed up the aisle of the nave. His hair was red-wet
and matted about his brow. There was a gash on one shoulder. His right
arm hung useless by his side. He was barefooted, but still in his left
hand he held a long knife, of which the steel was dimmed with blood.

"El Sarria! El Sarria!" cried the voices behind him. "There are a
hundred duros on his head! Take him! Take him!"

And in a moment more the whole church was filled with the clangour of
armed men. Bright uniforms filled the doorways. Sword bayonets glinted
from behind pillars, as eager pursuers rushed this way and that after
their prey, overturning the chairs and frightening the kneeling women.

Straight along the aisle, turning neither to right nor left, rushed the
hunted man. On the steps which lead up to the gilded railing he threw
down his knife, which with a clang rebounded on the marble floor of the
church.

A priest came forward as if to bar the little wicket door. But with a
bound El Sarria was within, and in another he had cast himself down on
the uppermost steps of the high altar itself and laid his hands upon the
cloth which bore _Su Majestad_, the high mystery of the Incarnation of
God.

At this uprose the Abbot, and stepping from his throne with a calm
dignity he reached the little golden gate through which the hunted man
had come one moment before the pursuers. These were the regular
Government troops, commanded by a Cristino officer, who with a naked
sword in his hand pointed them on.

Blind with anger and the loss of many comrades, they would have rushed
after the fugitive and slain him even on the holy place where he lay.

But the Abbot of the Order of the Virgin of Montblanch stood in the
breach. They must first pass over his body. He held aloft a cross of
gold with a gesture of stern defiance. The crozier-bearer had moved
automatically to his place behind him.

"Thus far, and no farther!" cried the Abbot; "bring not the strife of
man into the presence of the Prince of Peace. This man hath laid his
hands upon the horns of the altar, and by Our Lady and the Host of God,
he shall be safe!"




CHAPTER IX

THE SHADOW OF THE DESTROYER


The Abbot of Montblanch, Don Baltasar Varela, was supposed to be
occupied in prayer and meditation. But in common with many of his
abbatical brethren, he employed his leisure with quite other matters.
Many have been the jests levelled at the higher clergy of the Church of
Rome, rich, cloistered, and celibate, in their relations to the other
sex.

But all such jests, good against even certain holy popes of Rome and
their nephews, fell harmless against the triple brass of the reputation
of Don Baltasar, present head of the great Monastery of Montblanch.

Things might be whispered against the practice of divers of the brethren
of the Order. But out of the sphere of his immediate jurisdiction, Don
Baltasar concerned himself not with other men's matters.

"To his own God he standeth or falleth," quoth Don Baltasar, and washed
his hands of the responsibility.

But there were one or two offences which Don Baltasar did not treat in
this manner, and of these anon.

Meantime the Abbot talked with his confessor, and in the security of his
chamber was another man to the genial host, the liberal and well-read
churchman, the courteous man of the world who had listened so
approvingly to the wild talk of Rollo the Scot, and so condescendingly
clinked glasses with Brother Hilario, the rich young recruit who had
come from his native province to support the cause of _el Rey Absoluto_,
Don Carlos V. of Spain.

The chamber itself was different. It contained one chair, plain and rude
as that of any anchorite, in which the Abbot sat, a stool for the father
confessor, a pallet bed, a rough shelf with half a dozen worn volumes
above it, two great books with locked clasps of metal--these composed
the entire furniture of the chamber of one of the most powerful princes
of Holy Church in the world.

"It is no use, Anselmo," said the Abbot, gravely toying with the clasp
of one of the open books, in which a few lines of writing were still
wet, "after all, we are but playing with the matter here. The cure lies
elsewhere. We may indeed keep our petty bounds intact, sheltering within
a dozen of leagues not one known unfaithful to the true King, and the
principles of the Catholic religion; but we do not hold even Aragon with
any certainty. The cities whelm us in spite of ourselves. Zaragoza
itself is riddled with sedition, rottenly Jacobin to the core!"

"An accursed den of thieves!" said the gloomy monk. "God will judge it
in His time!"

"Doubtless--doubtless. I most fully agree!" said the Abbot, softly, "but
meantime it is His will that we use such means as we have in our hands
to work out the divine ends. It is well known to you that there is one
man who is driving this estate of Spain to the verge of a devil's
precipice."

With a look of dark shrewdness the priest dropped his head closer to his
superior's ear.

"Mendizabal," he said, "Mendizabal, the Jew of Madrid, the lover of
heretic England, the overgrown cat's-paw of the money-brokers, the
gabbler of the monkeys' chatter called 'liberal principles,' the evil
councillor of a foolish queen."

"Even so," sighed the Abbot. "To such God for a time grants power to
scourge His very elect. Great is their power--for a time. They flourish
like a green bay tree--for a time. But doth not the Wise Man say in the
Scripture, 'Better is wisdom than many battalions, and a prudent man
than a man of war'? You and I, father, must be the prudent men."

"But will not our brave Don Carlos soon rid us of these dead dogs of
Madrid?" said the Confessor. "What of his great generals Cabrera and El
Serrador? They have gained great victories. God has surely been with
their arms!"

The Prior shrugged his shoulders with a slight but inconceivably
contemptuous movement, which indicated that he was weary of the father's
line of argument.

"Another than yourself, Anselmo, might mistake me for a scoffer when I
say that in this matter we must be our own Don Carlos, our own
generals--nay, our own Providence. To be plain, Carlos V.--that blessed
and truly legitimate sovereign, is a donkey; Cabrera, a brave but cruel
_guerrillero_ who will get a shot through him one fine day, as all these
gluttons for fighting do!--The rest of the generals are even as Don
Carlos, and as for Providence--well, believe me, reverend father, in
these later days, even Providence has left poor Spain to fend for
herself?"

"God will defend His Church," said the Confessor solemnly.

"But how?" purred the Abbot. "Will Providence send down three legions of
angels to sweep the Nationals from sea-board to sea-board, from Alicante
even to Pontevedra?"

"I, for one, place neither bounds nor limits upon the Divine power!"
said the dark monk, sententiously.

"Well, then, I do," answered the Prior; "those of common sense, and of
requiring us who are on earth to use the means, the commoner and the
more earthly the better."

The monk bowed, but did not again contradict his superior. The latter
went on--

"Now I have received from a sure hand in Madrid, one of us and devoted
to our interests, an intimation that so soon as the present Cortes is
dissolved, Mendizabal means to abolish all the convents in Spain, to
seize their treasures and revenues, turn their occupants adrift, and
with the proceeds to pay enough foreign mercenaries to drive Don Carlos
beyond the Pyrenees and end the war!"

During this speech, which the Prior delivered calmly, tapping the lid of
his golden snuff-box and glancing occasionally at the Father Confessor
out of his unfathomable grey eyes, that gloomy son of the Church had
gradually risen to his full height. At each slow-dropping phrase the
expression of horror deepened on his countenance, and as the Abbot
ended, he lifted his right arm and pronounced a curse upon Mendizabal,
such as only the lips of an ex-inquisitor could have compassed, which
might have excited the envy of Torquemada the austere, and even caused
a smile of satisfaction to sit upon the grim lips of San Vicente Ferrer,
scourge of the Jews.

The Prior heard him to the end of the anathema.

"_And then_?" he said, quietly.

The dark monk stared down at his chief, as he set placidly fingering his
episcopal ring and smiling. Was it possible that in such an awful crisis
he remained unmoved?

"The day of anathemas is over," he said; "the power of words to loose or
to bind, so far as the world is concerned, is departed. But steel can
still strike and lead kill. We must use means, Father Anselmo, we must
use means."

"_I_ will be the means--_I_, Anselmo, unworthy son of Holy Church--with
this dagger I will strike the destroyer down! Body and soul I will send
him quick to the pit! I alone will go! Hereby I devote myself!
Afterwards let them rend and torture me as they will. I fear not; I
shall not blench. I, Anselmo, who have seen so many--shall know how
to comport myself!"

"Hush!" said the Abbot, for the first time seriously disturbed, and
looking over his shoulder at the curtained door, "moderate your voice
and command yourself, father. These things are not to be spoken of even
in secret. The Jew of Madrid shall die, because he hath risen up against
the Lord's anointed; but your hand shall not drive the steel!"

"And why, Baltasar Varela?" said the dark priest, "pray tell me why you
claim the right to keep me from performing my vow?"

"Let that tell you why!" said the Prior with severity. And without
rising, so circumscribed was his chamber, he reached down the small
wall-mirror, which he used when he shaved, and handed it to the Father
Confessor. "Think you, would a countenance like that have any chance of
being allowed into the ante-rooms of the Prime Minister?"

"I would disguise myself," said the priest.

The Prior smiled. "Yes," he said, "and like a _sereno_ in plain clothes,
look three times the monk you are with your frock upon you! No, no,
Anselmo; Holy Church has need of you, but she does not require that you
should throw your life away uselessly."

He motioned the Confessor to a seat, and passed him his snuff-box open,
from which the dark monk took a pinch mechanically, his lips still
working, like the sea after a storm, in a low continuous mutter of Latin
curses.

"I have found my instruments," said the Prior. "They are within the
walls of the Abbey of Montblanch at this moment. And we have just two
months in which to do our business."

The Father Confessor, obeying the beckoning eyebrow of his superior,
inclined his ear closer, and the Prior whispered into it for some
minutes. As he proceeded, doubt, hope, expectation, certainty, joy,
flitted across the monk's face. He clasped his hands as the Abbot
finished.

"God in His Heaven defend His poor children and punish the
transgressor!"

"Amen," said the Abbot, a little dryly; "and we must do what we can to
assist Him upon the earth."




CHAPTER X

A MAN AND HIS PRICE


These were memorable days for all the three youths, who so unexpectedly
found themselves within the Convent of Montblanch. The Cristino
soldiery, having fraternised with the Abbey cooks, and having been
treated well from the Abbey cellars, departed about their business,
leaving guards behind them to watch the exits and entrances of the
hill-set monastery.

Then a peace majestic, and apparently eternal as the circle of the
mountains, settled down upon Montblanch. Of all the men who dwelt there,
monk and novice, lay-brother and serving-man, only two, the Abbot
Baltasar and the gloomy Confessor, knew that the Abbey of the Virgin,
after existing six hundred years, and increasing in riches and dignity
all the while, had but eight weeks more in which to live its sweet and
cloistered life.

For the rest the Abbot was the most unconcerned of all, and as to the
Confessor, even a sentence of immediate execution could not have added
to the consistent funereal gloom of his countenance.

But to the three young men, altogether relieved from any cares of mind,
body, or estate, these days of peace revealed new worlds. The
sweet-tongued bells which called dreamily to morning prayer awoke them
in their cells. The soft yet fresh mountain air that came in through
their open windows, the Psalms chanted in a strange tongue, the walks to
the caves of the hermits, and the sanctuaries of the saints scattered up
and down the mountain steeps, had gone far to convince John Mortimer
that there had been religion in the world before the coming of his
father's Primitive Methodism. Even hare-brained Rollo grew less
argumentative, and it was remarked that on several occasions he left his
long sword Killiecrankie behind him when he pilgrimed to the conventual
chapel.

As for Brother Hilario, he became so saintly that his man-servant,
Francois (who regretted bitterly the Palais Royal and its joys), haunted
him with offers to convey mission or missives to _la petite_ Concha of
Sarria with the utmost discretion, only to be repulsed with scorn.

To chant in the choir, to live laborious days, to count the linen of the
brotherhood, to ride a white mule, and to sleep in a whitewashed cell,
these were in future to be the simple daily pleasures of Brother
Hilario, late Count of Saint Pierre. Never more would he sing a lusty
serenade beneath a lady's window, never more throw his cloak about his
mouth and follow a promising adventure at a carnival masquerade.

These grey monastery walls were to contain his life for ever. Its simple
range of duties and frugal pleasures were to satisfy him till the day
when, the inhabitant of one of its rocky cells, he should be found dead
upon a stiff frosty morning, and the bones of this new Saint Hilario
(and eke the stone on which he had sat), would be added to the others in
the reliquary chamber of the Abbey.

There were, however, at least two objections to this. Firstly, Brother
Hilario was not yet twenty-five years of age and a Frenchman, with the
blood of youth running very hotly in his veins; and, secondly, unless
the unexpected happened, the monastery in two months more would cease to
exist upon the face of the earth.

The Abbot cultivated the society of all the three youths. But as the
Englishman spoke little French and no Spanish, as the manner of his
nation is, their intercourse was, of course, restricted. Nevertheless,
the affair of the Priorato wine went forward apace, and the bargain was
struck with the almoner of the convent at a rate which satisfied all
parties. John Mortimer paid L90 down in hard cash as earnest of the
price, being the balance of the private venture with which he meant to
purchase the right to return to Chorley and its paternal spindles.

But the preference of the Abbot for the headstrong Scot of Fife was too
manifest to be ignored, and many were the speculations among the
brethren as to what might be the purpose of Don Baltasar in thus
spending so much of his time with a stripling heretic.

That he had such purpose none doubted, nor that the results would in due
time be seen to the honour of the Holy House of Montblanch. For though
the brethren used the dearest privilege of all brotherhoods--that of
grumbling freely at the Superior--none questioned either Don Baltasar's
capacity or his single-mindedness where the Order was concerned.

The Abbot sounded the depths of the young man. He met his Scottish
caution with a frank confession of his purpose.

"I am putting my life and the lives of all these good and holy men in
your hands, Don Rollo," he said. "Any day there may be a Nationalist
army here. Their outposts are watching us even now. A fugitive was
pursued to the very altar of sanctuary the other night! What! You saw
him? Ah, of course, it was the night when our pleasant acquaintanceship
began. Frankly, then, we are all Carlists here, Don Rollo. We stand for
the King, who alone will stand for us."

"Your secret, or any secret, is safe with me," said Rollo grandly,
turning his quick frank eyes upon the Prior. "Not death--no, nor
torture--could drag a word from me against my will."

The Abbot perused him with his eyes thoughtfully for a moment.

"No, I do not think they would," he said slowly, and without his usual
smile.

"Further, I would desire to enlist you as a recruit," he went on, after
a pause. "There are many English fighting in our ranks, but few of your
brave northern nation. Don Rollo, we need such men as you are. We can
give them a career. Indeed, I have at present a mission in hand such as
might make the fortune of any brave man. It is worth a general's
commission if rightly carried through. Not many young men have such a
chance at twenty-two. Ah, rogue, rogue--I heard of your doings the other
night down at the inn of San Vicente, and of how with your sole sword
you held at bay a score of Migueletes and Aragonese gipsies--smart
fellows with their knives all of them!"

"It was nothing," said Rollo modestly; "the cowards did not mean
fighting. It was never in their eyes."

"Pardon me," said the Prior, "I know these fellows a great deal better
than you, and it was a very great deal indeed. Your life hung upon the
turning of a hair!"

"Well, for that time the hair turned my way, at any rate," said Rollo,
who honestly thought nothing of the affair, and did not wish the Abbot,
if he had indeed serious business on hand, to measure him by a little
public-house _fracas_.

"Ah," said he gently, "you follow your star! It is good policy for those
who would go far. Also I think that your star will lead you shortly into
some very good society."

The Abbot paused a little ere he made the plunge. Perhaps even his
steadfast pulse felt the gravity of the occasion.

Then he began to speak--lightly, rapidly, almost nervously, with the
sharp staccato utterance with which Don Baltasar concealed his intensest
emotion.

"The commission is a great one," said the Abbot. "This great Order, and
all the servants of God in Spain, depend for their lives on you. If you
succeed, Don Carlos will assuredly sit on the throne of his fathers; if
you fail, there is an end. But it is necessary that you should carry
with you your two friends. I, on my part, will give you a guide who
knows every pass and bridle-path, every cave and shelter-stone, betwixt
here and Madrid."

"Then I am to go to Madrid?"

"Not, as I hope, to Madrid, but to La Granja, where your work will await
you. It is, as you may know, a palace on the slopes of the Guadarrama
mountains, much frequented by the court of the Queen-Regent at Madrid."

"There is to be no bloodshed among the prisoners?" said Rollo. "Fighting
is very well, but I am not going to be heart or part in any shootings
of unarmed men!"

"My friend," said the Abbot, with affectionate confidentiality, laying
his arm on the young man's sleeve, "I give you my word of honour. All
you have to do is to bring two amiable and Catholic ladies here--the
Lady Cristina and her little maid. They are eager to be reconciled to
mother Church, but are prevented by evil councillors. They will come
gladly enough, I doubt not, so soon as they are informed of their
destination."

"Well," said Rollo, "on these conditions I will undertake the task; but
as to those who are there in the palace with her? How are they to fare?"

"Your instructions," said the Abbot, "are these. You will go first to
the camp of General Cabrera, to whom I will give you a letter. He will
furnish you with such escort as may be thought desirable. You will also
receive from him detailed orders as to what you must do when you arrive
at La Granja. And I will see to it that you go from this place with a
colonel's commission in the service of Carlos V. of Spain. Does that
satisfy you?"

It did, but for all that the Abbot gave Rollo no hint as to what was to
be the fate of those who might be taken at La Granja in the company of
the little queen and her mother, the Regent Maria Cristina.

There was no difficulty at all about Etienne Saint Pierre, but John
Mortimer was all for devoting his energies to the task of getting his
casks of Priorato down to Barcelona for shipment. It was only after he
had seen the Nationalist guards stave in cask after cask of his beloved
wine, on which he was depending to lay the foundation of his fortune,
drinking as much as they could, and letting the rest run to waste on the
hillside, that the sullen English anger arose, and burned hotly in the
bosom of John Mortimer.

"Then I will help to clear them out of the country, if they will not let
me ship the property I have bought and paid good earnest money upon! I
can shoot a pistol as well as any one--if the man is only near enough!"

So presently, these three, and another behind them, were riding out of
the gates of Montblanch, a colonel's commission in the army of Don
Carlos in Rollo's breast-pocket, a monopoly promise of all the Priorato
wine for six years in that of John Mortimer, and in Brother Hilario's a
dispensation absolving him for the length of his military service from
all conventual and other vows.

It is difficult to say which of the three was the happiest.

"That bit of paper is worth more than a thousand pounds any day at
Barcelona!" said John Mortimer triumphantly, slapping the pocket which
contained the Abbot's undertaking about the Priorato. "It is as good as
done if only I can get those sixty hogsheads down to the sea, as an
earnest of what is to come!"

Ah, if only, indeed!

Rollo smiled quietly as he put his hand into his pocket, and touched the
colonel's commission that nestled there.

"I must keep a tight rein on my command," he said. "I hear these Carlist
fellows are the devil and all!"

But as for Brother Hilario, it is grievous to state that he stood up in
his stirrups and hallooed with pure joy when he lost sight of the
monastery towers, that he threw his pocket breviary into a ditch, and
concealed carefully the jewelled crucifix in the breast of his blue
velvet coat--with the intent, as he openly averred, of pawning it so
soon as they got to Madrid.

He turned round upon the huge attendant--a simple Gallegan peasant by
his dress--who followed them by order of the Abbot.

"By the way, sirrah," he cried, "we pass through the village of Sarria,
do we not?"

The Gallegan lifted a pair of eyes that burned slumberously, like red
coals in a smith's furnace, and with a strange smile replied, "Yes,
_caballero_, we do pass through Sarria."

As for the Prior, he stood at the gate where he had given the lads his
benediction, and watched them out of sight. Father Anselmo was at his
elbow, but half a pace behind.

"There they go," said the Prior. "God help them if the Nationalists
overhaul them. They carry enough to hang them all a dozen times over.
But praise to St. Vincent and all the saints, nothing to compromise us,
nor yet the Abbey of Our Lady of Montblanch!"




CHAPTER XI

CARTEL OF DEFIANCE


It was indeed Ramon Garcia, who on a stout shaggy pony, a portmanteau
slung before and behind him, followed his masters with the half-sullen,
wholly downcast look of the true Gallegan servitor. He was well attired
in the Galician manner, appearing indeed like one of those Highlanders
returning from successful service in the Castillas or in Catalunia, all
in rusty brown double-cloth, the _pano pardo_ of his class, his
wide-brimmed hat plumed, and his _alpargatas_ of esparto grass exchanged
for holiday shoes of brown Cordovan leather.

But in his eyes, whenever he raised them, there burned, morose and
unquenchable, the anger of the outcast El Sarria against the world. He
lifted them indeed but seldom, and no one of the cavaliers who rode so
gallantly before him recognised in the decently clad, demure,
well-shaven man-servant supplied to them by the Abbot, the wild El
Sarria, whom with torn mantle and bleeding shoulder, they had seen fling
himself upon the altar of the Abbey of Montblanch.

So when little Etienne de Saint Pierre, that Parisian exquisite and true
Legitimist, finding himself emancipated alike from vows conventual and
monkish attire, and having his head, for the time being, full of the
small deceiver Concha, the companion of Dolores Garcia, inquired for
the village of Sarria and whether they would chance to pass that way, he
never for a moment thought that their honest dullish Jaime from far away
Lugo, took any more interest in the matter than might serve him to
speculate upon what sort of _anisete_ they might chance to find at the
village venta.

By favour of the Abbot the three voyagers into the unknown had most
gallant steeds under them, and were in all things well appointed, with
English and French passports in their own several names and styles as
gentlemen travelling for pleasure, to see strange lands, and especially
this ancient, restless, war-distracted country of Spain.

Their servant, Jaime de Lugo, was appropriately horsed on a little
round-barrelled Asturian pony, able to carry any weight, which padded on
its way with a quiet persistence that never left its master far behind
the most gallant galloper of the cavalcade.

So these three rode on towards the camp of the most redoubted and
redoubtable General Cabrera.

This chief of all the armies of Don Carlos was then at the height of his
fame. His fear was on all the land. He was brave, cruel, perfectly
unscrupulous, this "Killer of Aragon," this "Butcher of Tortosa." In a
few months he had achieved a fame greater almost than that of
Zumalacarregui, the prince of _guerrilleros_, himself.

At this time Cabrera was holding half a dozen of the Cristino generals
at bay, including Minos himself, the chief of all. His tactics consisted
in those immemorial rapid movements and unexpected appearances which
have characterised Spanish guerilla warfare ever since the Carthagenians
invaded the land, and the aboriginal Celtiberians took to the mountains
of Morella and the wild passes of Aragon, just as Cabrera and El
Serrador were doing at this date.

Meanwhile southward out of the pleasant hills of Montblanch, our three
lads were riding, each with his own hopes and fears in his heart. Rollo
of course was the keenest of the party; for not only was the work to his
liking, but he was the natural as well as the actual leader. He alone
knew the Abbot's purposes, or at least as much of them as Don Baltasar
had thought it wise to reveal to his emissary--which after all was not a
great deal.

But John Mortimer had failed to rouse himself to any enthusiasm even
under the spur of Rollo's defiant optimism.

They would return to Montblanch in a week or two, the latter averred. By
that time the passes would be cleared. John's wine would be safe. The
Abbot's seven-year undertaking in his pocket was good for the face of it
at any wine-shipper's in Barcelona. In a month he (Rollo) would be a
colonel--perhaps a general, and he (John Mortimer) rich beyond the
dreams of avarice.

"Or both of us may be dead, more likely!" suggested the latter, with
gloomy succinctness.

"Dead--nonsense!" cried Rollo. "See here, man, you believe in God, or at
any rate your father does. So, hang it, you must have at least a kind of
second-hand interest Above. Now, is there not a time appointed for you
to die? Here, look at this clock" (he took an ancient and very
bulbous-faced watch out of his pocket). "This minute hand has to push
that hour hand so many times round before the moment comes for your
ghost to mount and ride. Till that time comes, let your heart sit
care-free. You cannot hasten, or retard that event by one solitary
tick--can you? No? Well then, keep the ball rolling meantime, and if it
rolls to the camp of Cabrera, why, you will be just as safe there as in
your bed at Chorley with the curtains drawn and your prayers said!"

"I have a notion I could hasten the event in my own case by some few
ticks, with the assistance of this unaccustomed little plaything!" said
John Mortimer, who had been listening to this harangue of Rollo's with
manifest impatience. And as if to prove his words, he made a sweeping
motion with his pistol in the air. Instantly Rollo showed great
interest.

"Good heavens, man, do you know that weapon is fresh-primed, and the
trigger at full cock? If you are anxious to get a ball through your
head, I am not!"

John Mortimer laughed long and loud.

"What about the appointed ticks on the watch-dial now, Master Blair?
Have you forgotten you can neither hasten nor retard the day of your
death? When the minute hand approaches the inevitable moment, Fate's
full stop--did you not call it, you must mount and ride to Hades! Till
then, you know, you are perfectly safe."

Rollo looked disgusted.

"That is the worst of trying to argue with an Englishman," he said; "his
head is like a cannon ball, impervious to all logic. He does not attend
to your premisses, and he never has any of his own! Of course, _if_ it
were ordained by the powers Above that at this moment you should
suddenly go mad and shoot us all, _that_ would be our appointed time,
and you would no more hasten it by your tomfoolery than if a star fell
out of the firmament and knocked this round world to everlasting
potsherds!"

"_Umm!_" said John Mortimer, still unconvinced, "very likely--but--if I
saw my wine-barrels on the ship '_Good Intent_' of Liverpool, and my
thousand pounds upon deposit receipt in honest William Deacon's Bank in
Chorley, it would be a hanged sight more comfort to me than all the
appointed ticks on all the appointed watches in the world!"

And so saying, the Englishman rode on his way very sullenly, muttering
and shaking his head at intervals, as if the journey and adventure they
had entered upon, were not at all to his liking.

During this fatalistic controversy between Rollo and his friend, Etienne
de Saint Pierre had dropped somewhat behind. He had been interested in
the remark of the glum servitor who followed them that they must of
necessity pass through the village of Sarria.

"Do you know that place well?" he said, speaking in Castilian, which,
being of Spanish descent on his mother's side, he knew as accurately as
his native language.

"What place?" queried the Gallegan without raising his eyes. Etienne was
not disturbed by the apparent ill-humour of the fellow. It was, as he
knew, natural to these corner-men of Spain. But he wondered at the
rascal's quite remarkable size and strength. The arm which showed below
the velvet-banded cuff of the rusty brown coat was knotted and corded,
like the roots of an oak where the water wears away the bank in the
spring rains. His chest, where his embroidered shirt was open for a
hand's-breadth down, showed a perfect network of scars, ridged white
cuts, triangular purple stabs, as it were punched out and only half
filled in, as well as cicatrices where wounds reluctant to heal had been
treated by the hot iron of half the unskilful surgeons in Spain.

But after all these things are no novelty in Iberia, where the knife is
still among the lower orders the only court of appeal, and Etienne made
no remark upon them. He had indeed other affairs on his mind of a more
engrossing nature.

"Mon Dieu," he communed with himself, "'tis a full calendar month since
I kissed a pretty girl. I wonder what on earth it feels like?"

The path to Sarria was steep and long, but their guide, now permanently
in the van, threaded his way betwixt stone and stone, now down the
narrow gorge of an _arroyo_ littered with _debris_ and then up the next
talus of slate chips like a man familiar from infancy with the way.

From a commanding hill-top he pointed away to the southward and showed
them where the bayonet of a Cristino outpost glinted every half minute
as the sentinel stalked to and fro upon his beat.

The Gallegan chuckled a little when the Englishman remarked upon their
danger, and tapped his long rifle significantly.

"The danger of the Cristino soldier, you mean," he said, "why, masters
mine, I could lead you to a place from which you might shoot yonder lad
so secretly that his comrades would never know from what quarter arrived
his death."

It was evening ere they drew near the village of Sarria, which lay, a
drift of rusty red roofs and whitewashed walls beneath the tumbled
Aragonese foot-hills. The river ran nearly dry in its channel and the
mill had stopped. There was not enough water to drive the clacking
undershot wheel of Luis Fernandez the comfortable, propertied miller of
Sarria, who had been so cruelly wounded by the outlaw Ramon on the night
when he claimed shelter from the Carlist monks of Montblanch. Ah, well,
all that would soon be at an end, so at least they whispered in Sarria!
If all tales were true, monks, monastery tithes, and rights of
sanctuary, they would all go together. The wise politicians at Madrid,
eager for their country's good (and certain advantages upon the stock
exchange), were about to pass the besom of destruction over the
religious houses, sweeping away in a common ruin grey friar and white
friar and black friar. Nay, the salaried parish priests would find
themselves sadly docked, and even stout Father Mateo himself was
beginning to quake in his shoes and draw his girdle tighter by a hole at
a time to prepare for the event.

So at least the bruit went forth, and though none save the Prior of
Montblanch and his confidant knew anything for certain, the air was full
of rumours; while between the Carlist war and the report of the great
coming changes, the minds of men were growing grievously unsettled.
Honest folk and peaceful citizens now went about armed. The men sat
longer at the _cafes_. They returned later home. They spoke more sharply
to their wives when they asked of them why these things were so.

By the little village gate where Gaspar Perico, the chief representative
of the town dues of Sarria, sat commonly at the receipt of custom, a
group of men occupied a long bench, with their pints of wine and the
sweet syrup of pomegranates before them, as is the custom of Aragon on
summer evenings.

The venta of Sarria was kept by a nephew of Gaspar's, the octroi man,
one recently come to the district. His name was Esteban, and like his
uncle he had already got him the name of a "valiant," or of a man ready
with his tongue and equally ready with his knife.

With the younger Perico's coming, the venta _El Corral_ had promptly
become the Cafe de Madrid, while the prices of all liquors rose to mark
the change, even as in a like proportion their quality speedily
diminished. Customers would doubtless have left at this juncture but for
the fact that Esteban was his uncle's nephew, and that Perico the Elder
sat at the receipt of custom.

So at this newly named Cafe de Madrid our travellers alighted, and the
silent Gallegan, gathering the reins in his hands, disappeared into the
stables, whose roofs rose over the low front of the venta like a
cathedral behind its cloisters.

"Good evening to you, young cavaliers!" cried the gallant Gaspar, who
commonly did the honours even in the presence of his nephew, the nominal
host of the venta. The younger man had followed the Gallegan to the
stables with a declared intent of seeing that the horses were properly
provided for.

"You have come far to-day?" inquired Gaspar courteously.

"From the Abbey of----" (here Rollo kicked Etienne suddenly) "I mean we
passed the Abbey of Montblanch, leaving behind us gladly such a nest of
Carlist thieves! From the true nationalist city of Zaragoza we come,"
said the Count de Saint Pierre in a breath.

"You are all good men and true here, I observe," said Rollo, who had
seen Cristino colours on the official coat of Gaspar Perico.

"Good men and good nationals!" cried Gaspar. "Indeed, I believe you! I
should like to see any other show his face in Sarria. There never was
one since Ramon Garcia became an outlaw, and he fled the village rather
than face me, the champion of the province. Ah, he knew better than to
encounter this noble and well-tried weapon!"

And as he spoke he tapped the brown stock of his blunderbuss, and took a
wholly superfluous squint down the stock to be certain that the sights
were properly adjusted, or perhaps to show the excellent terms he was on
with his weapon.

At this very moment, Esteban the bully, Esteban the unconquered valiant,
came running from the stables of the venta, holding his hands to his
face, and behind him, towering up suddenly and filling the entire
doorway, appeared the huge figure of the Gallegan. What had occurred
between them no man could say. But the Gallegan with great coolness
proceeded to cast out upon the rubbish heap before the door, armful
after armful of chopped and partly rotten straw which exhaled a thin
steam into the cool air of evening. He followed this up by emptying a
huge leather-covered sieve full of bad barley several times upon the
same vaporous mound. Then with the greatest composure and with a
complete understanding of the premises, the Gallegan walked across to a
smaller stable, where the landlord's own cattle were kept. He kicked the
door open with two applications of his foot, and presently was lost to
sight within.

"Shoot him--shoot him, uncle!" cried the half-tearful bully; "he hath
smitten me upon the nose to the outpouring of my blood! Shall a Perico
abide this? Shoot--for the honour of our name!"

But the valiant man of the receipt of customs was also a cautious one.

"Not so, dear Esteban," he said; "this man is the servant of three noble
cavaliers of a foreign nation. If he has done wrong, their purses will
make reparation. They are all rich, these foreigners! For all the spilt
fodder they will also doubtless pay. Is it not so, _caballeros_?"

But Rollo, the readily furious, gripped his sword and said, "Not one
groat or stiver, not a single maravedi, will I pay till I have spoken
with our man-servant and know the cause of this disorder from himself."

And he laid his hand so determinedly on the hilt of Killiecrankie, whose
basket had been endued with a new silk lining of red and tassels of the
same colour, that the valiant men of Sarria thought better of any
designs of attack they might have entertained, and preferred to await
the event.

The Gallegan by this time had emerged from the smaller private stable
with a good bushel measure of straw and barley, which he carried on his
head towards the larger premises where his masters' three steeds and his
own round-barrelled Aragonese pony had been settled for the night.

He waved his hand to the three at the venta door.

"There is now no fault! It is of good quality this time!" he cried.

And no one said a word more concerning the matter. Nor did Senor Esteban
Perico again advert to the stout buffet his nose had received at the
beginning of the affair. On the contrary, he was laboriously polite to
the Gallegan, and put an extra piece of fresh-cut garlic in his soup
when it came to supper-time. For after this fashion was the younger
Perico made.

And while the three waited, they talked to all and sundry. For Etienne
had questions to ask which bore no small relation to the present
preoccupation of his mind.

Concha--oh yes, little Concha Cabezos from Andalucia, certainly they
knew her. All the village knew her.

"A pretty girl and dances remarkably well," said Esteban Perico
complacently, "but holds her head too high for one in her position."

"I do not call that a fault," said Etienne, moving along the wooden
settle in front of the venta door to make room for the huge Gallegan,
who at that moment strolled up. He did this quite naturally, for in
Spain no distinctions of master or servant hold either upon church
pavements or on venta benches.

"No, it is certainly no fault of Concha's that she keeps herself aloof,"
said a young fellow in a rustic galliard's dress--light stockings, knee
breeches of black cloth, a short shell jacket, and a broad sash of red
about his waist. He twirled his moustachios with the air of one who
could tell sad tales of little Concha if only he had the mind.

"And why, sir?" cried Etienne, bristling in a moment like a turkeycock;
"pray, has the young lady vouchsafed you any token of her regard?"

"Nay, not to me," said the local Don Juan, cautiously; "but if you are
anxious upon the question, I advise you to apply to Don Rafael de
Flores, our alcalde's son."

"What," cried the Frenchman, "is he her lover?"

"Her lover of many months," answered Don Juan, "truly you say right. And
the strange thing is that he got himself stabbed for it too, by that
great oaf Ramon Garcia, whom they now call 'El Sarria.' Ha! ha! and he
was as innocent as yourself all the time."

"I will presently interview the Don Rafael de Flores," muttered Etienne.
"This is some slander. 'Tis not possible Concha has been deceiving
me--and she so young, so innocent. Oh, it would be bitter indeed if it
were so!"

He meditated a moment, flicking his polished boot with a riding-whip.

"And all the more bitter, that up to this moment I thought it was I who
was deceiving her."

But the young Don Juan of the Sarrian _cafe_ liked to hold the floor,
and with three distinguished cavaliers for listeners, it was something
to find a subject of common interest. Besides, who knew whether he might
not hear a tale or two to the disadvantage of little Concha Cabezos, who
had flouted him so sadly at last carnival and made a score of girls
laugh at him upon the open Rambla.

"It happened thus," he said, "you have heard of El Sarria the outlaw, on
whose head both parties have set a price?"

"He was of our village," cried half a dozen at once. It was their one
title to respect, indisputable in any company. They began all
conversations when they went from home with Ramon Garcia's name, and the
statement of the fact that they had known his father.

"And a fine old man he was; very gracious and formal and of much
dignity."

"It happened thus," the youthful dandy went on. "El Sarria came home
late one night, and when he arrived at his own gable-end, lo, there by
the _reja_, where the inside stairway mounts, was a youth 'plucking the
turkey' with his sweetheart through a broken bar, and that apparently
with great success. And the fool Ramon, his head being filled with his
Dolores, never bethought himself for a moment that there might be
another pretty girl in the house besides his wife, and so without
waiting either '_Buenos!_' or '_Hola!_'--_click_ went Ramon's knife into
the lover's back! Such a pair of fools as they were!"

"And did this--this Rafael de Flores die?" asked Etienne, divided
between a hope that he had, and a fear that if so he might be balked of
his revenge.

"Die? No--he was about again before many weeks. But this foolish Ramon
took straightway to the hills, because he thought that his wife was
false and that he had killed her cousin and lover."

And even as Don Juan was speaking these words a young man of a slender
form and particularly lithe carriage, dressed in the height of Madrid
fashion, walked into the _cafe_ with a smiling flourish of his hat to
the company.

"A glass of vermuth, Esteban," he said, "and if any of these gentlemen
will join me I shall feel honoured. Be good enough to tell them who I
am, Gaspar, my friend."

"Senor cavalier," said the valiant man of Sarria, planting the butt of
his blunderbuss firmly on the ground that he might lean upon it, and as
it were more officially make the important introduction, "this is no
other than the only son of our rich and distinguished alcalde, Senor Don
Rafael de Flores, concerning whom you have already heard some speech."

And Gaspar, who knew his place, stood back for the impressive civilities
which followed. The jaws of the villagers dropped as they saw the three
foreigners with one accord raise their hats from their heads and make
each a reverence after his kind. Rollo, the tragical Scot, swept back
his sombrero-brim in a grand curve as if it bore a drooping plume. John
Mortimer jerked his beaver vertically off and clapped it down again as
if he had a spite at the crown, while M. Etienne turned out his toes and
in his elbows, as he bowed sharply at the waist with a severe and
haughty expression, without, however, taking his hat from his head.

"I must do the honours, I see," said Rollo, laughing, "since we have no
local trumpeter to do them for us. (Where in the world is that sullen
dog, our most faithful Galician?) This to the left is Monsieur de Saint
Pierre, count of that name. Then next Mr. John Mortimer of Chorley in
England, and as for me I am Rollo Blair of Blair Castle in the county of
Fife, at your service."

At this point the aforesaid M. de Saint Pierre stepped forward. He had
drawn out his card-case and selected a pasteboard with the care and
deliberation with which a connoisseur may choose a cigar.

"I have the honour to present Senor Don Rafael with my cartel of
defiance," he said simply.

The young man thus addressed stood a long moment dumb and fixed in the
middle of the floor, gazing at the engraved lines on the card, which he
had mechanically accepted, without comprehending their meaning.

"A cartel!" he stammered at last; "impossible. I can have no cause of
quarrel with this gentleman from France. I do not even know him!"

But Etienne had all the science of the affair of honour at his
finger-ends.

"I have nothing to say, sir," he replied, frigidly; "I refer you to my
second!"

And he turned to his nearest companion, who happened to be John
Mortimer. The Englishman, however, had but imperfectly understood.

"Well," he said in his best Spanish, "I am prepared to treat for any
quantity, provided the quality be to my satisfaction. But mind, the
terms are, 'delivered on the quay at Barcelona.' _No more Priorato pigs
in pokes for John Mortimer of Chorley._"

He relapsed into English with the last clause, and sticking his thumbs
into the pockets of his waistcoat, he waited Don Rafael's reply to his
ultimatum.

"Holy Virgin, are they all mad?" that young gentleman was crying in a
passion of despair when Rollo stepped forward and bowed courteously.

"The matter is briefly this, as I understand it," he said. "My friend,
M. Etienne de Saint Pierre, has been in terms of considerable amity with
a certain young lady--whose name I need not repeat in a public place. He
has been given to understand that you claim a similar high position in
her favour. If this be so, Senor, my principal wishes to end the
difficulty by a duel to the death, so that the young lady may not be put
to the painful necessity of making a choice between two such gallant
men. I make it _quite_ clear, do I not? Two of you love one lady. The
lady cannot accept both. You fight. There remains but one. The lady is
in no difficulty! Do you both agree?"

"I agree most heartily," said Etienne, rubbing his hands cheerfully, and
practising feints in the air with his forefinger.

"But not I--not I!" cried Don Rafael, with sudden frenzy; "I do not
agree--far from it, indeed. I would have you know that I am a married
man. My wife is waiting for me at home at this moment. I must go. I
must, indeed. Besides, I am under age, and it is murder in the first
degree to shoot an unarmed man. I am not in love with any person. I make
claims to no lady's affection. I am a married man, I tell you,
gentlemen--I was never in love with anybody else. I told my wife so only
this morning!"

"Not with Dona Concha Cabezos of this village?" said Etienne, sternly.
"I am advised that you have been in the habit of making that claim."

"Never, never," cried the gallant, wringing his hands. "Saints, angels,
and martyrs--if this should come to my wife's ears! I swear to you I do
not know any Concha--I never heard of her. I will have nothing to do
with her! Gentlemen, you must excuse me. I have an engagement!"

And with this hurried adieu the little man in the Madrid suit fairly
bolted out of the _cafe_, and ran down the street at full speed.

And in the dusk of the gable arches the Gallegan sat with his head sunk
low in his hands.

"What a fool, Ramon Garcia! What a mortal fool you were--to have thought
for a moment that your little Dolores could have loved a thing like
that!"




CHAPTER XII

THE CRYING OF A YOUNG CHILD


"And now, gentlemen," said Monsieur Etienne grandly, "where is the young
gentleman who traduced in my hearing the fair fame of Dona Concha
Cabezos? _Ma foi_, I will transfer my cartel to him!"

Then, with great dignity, uprose the ancient valiant man of the octroi
of Sarria, for he felt that some one must vindicate the municipality.

"Cavalier," he said, with a sweeping bow which did honour at once to
himself and to the place in which they were assembled, "there may be
those amongst us who have spoken too freely, and on their behalf and my
own I convey to you an apology if we have unwittingly offended. In a
venta--I beg my nephew's pardon--in a _cafe_, like the Cafe de Madrid,
men's tongues wag fast without harm being intended to any man, much less
to any honourable lady. So it was in this case, and in the name of the
loyal town of Sarria, I express my regret. If these words be sufficient,
here is my hand. The Cafe de Madrid, sir, begs your acceptance of a
bottle of the best within its cellars. But if your lordship be still
offended, there are twenty men here who are ready to meet you on the
field of honour. For I would have you know, gentlemen, that we are also
_Caballeros_. But it must be with the weapons in the use of which we
have some skill--the cloak wrapped about the left arm, the Manchegan
knife in the right hand. Or, if our Aragonese custom please not your
honours, I make myself personally responsible for any words that may
have been spoken; aye, and will be proud to stand out upon the hillside
and exchange shots with you till you are fully satisfied--standing up,
man to man, at one hundred yards. This I do because the offence was
given in my nephew's _cafe_, and because for forty years I have been
called the Valiant Man of Sarria!"

The ancient Gaspar stood before them, alternately patting the stock of
his blunderbuss and pulling the ragged ends of his long white
moustachios, till Rollo, who could recognise true courage when he saw
it, stepped up to him, and making a low bow held out a hand, which the
other immediately grasped amid plaudits from the assembled company.

"You are a brave man, a valiant man, indeed, Senor----" he was
beginning.

"Gaspar Perico, at your service--of the wars of the Independence!"
interrupted the old man, proudly.

"You have not forgotten the use of your weapons, _Senor Valiente_!" said
the young Scot. "Take off your hat, Etienne," he added in French, "and
accept the old fellow's apology as graciously as you can. I am your
second, and have arranged the matter for you already!"

With a little grumbling Etienne complied, and was graciously pleased to
allow himself to be appeased. Rollo felt for him, for he himself knew
well what it is to itch to fight somebody and yet have to put up one's
sword with the point untried. But a new feeling had come into his soul.
A steadying-rein was thrown over his shoulder--the best that can be set
to diminish the ardours of a firebrand like this hot-headed Scot. This
was responsibility. He was upon a mission of vast importance, and though
he cared about the rights and wrongs of the affair not at all, and would
just as soon have taken service with the red and yellow of the nationals
as with the white _boinas_ of Don Carlos, once committed to the
adventure he resolved that no follies that he could prevent should
damage a successful issue.

So, having settled the quarrel, and partaken of the excellent smuggled
vermuth de Torino, in which, by his uncle's order, Esteban the host and
his guests washed away all traces of ill-feeling, the three sat down to
enjoy the _puchero_, which all this while had been quietly simmering in
the kitchen of the inn. At their request the repast was shared by Gaspar
Perico, while the nephew, in obedience to a sign from his uncle, waited
at table. It was not difficult to perceive that Senor Gaspar was the
true patron of the Cafe de Madrid in the village of Sarria.

       *       *       *       *       *

So soon as he knew that the cause for which he had stabbed his wife's
cousin had been one that in no wise concerned little Dolores the
disguised Ramon Garcia went out to seek his wife, a great pity and a
great remorse tearing like hungry Murcian vultures at his heart. He was
not worthy even to speak to that pure creature. His hasty jealousy had
ruined their lives. He it was who had squandered his chances, lost his
patrimony, broken up their little home behind the whispering reeds of
the Cerde. Yes, he had done all that, but--_he loved her_. So he went
forth to seek her, and the night closed about him, grey and solemn with
a touch of chill in the air. It was not hot and stifling like that other
when he had come home to meet his doom and crept up through a kind of
blood-red haze to strike that one blow by the latticed _reja_ of his
house.

Ramon did not hide and skulk now. He walked down the street with his
long locks shorn, his beard clean shaven, his Gallegan dress and plumed
hat, secure that none of his fellow townsmen would recognise him. And,
at least in the semi-darkness, he was entirely safe.

There he could see the little white shed on the roof where Dolores used
to feed her pigeons, and he smiled as he remembered how before he
married he had been wont to keep various breeds, such as Valencia
tumblers, pouters, and fast-flying carriers upon which he used to wager
a few reals with his friends.

But that was in his bachelor days. He smiled again as he thought that
when Dolores came it was a different story. Never was such a little
house-wife. She was all for the pot. She would have him part with his
fine sorts, save and except one or two tumblers that she used to feed
from her balcony. She loved to see them from her window circling,
wheeling, and as it were, play-acting in the air. For the rest, the
commonest kinds that laid the most eggs, brought up the largest broods,
and took on the plumpest breasts when fed with ground maize and Indian
corn, green from the patch which he grew on purpose for her behind the
willows--these were his wife's especial delight.

Ramon opened the little wicket to which she had so often run to meet
him, under the three great fig trees. The gate creaked on unaccustomed
hinges. The white square of a placard on the post caught his eye. It
was too dark to see clearly, or else El Sarria would have seen that it
was a bill of sale of the house and effects of a certain Ramon Garcia,
outlaw. As he stepped within his foot slipped among the rotten figs
which lay almost ankle-deep on the path he had once kept so clean. A
buzz of angry wasps arose. They were drunken, however, with the
fermenting fruit, and blundered this way and that like men tipsy with
new wine.

The path before him was tangled across and across with bindweed and
runners of untended vine. The neglected artichokes had shot, and their
glary seed-balls rose as high as his chin like gigantic thistles.

The house that had been so full of light and loving welcome lay all dark
before him, blank and unlovely as a funeral vault.

Yet for all these signs of desolation Ramon only reproached himself the
more.

"The little Dolores," he thought, "she has felt herself forsaken. Like a
wounded doe she shrinks from sight. Doubtless she comes and goes by the
back of the house. The sweet little Dolores----" And he smiled. It did
not occur to him that she would ever be turned out of the house that was
his and hers. She would go on living there and waiting for him. And now
how surprised she would be. But he would tell her all, and she would
forgive him. And it is typical of the man and of his nation that he
never for a moment dreamed that his being "El Sarria," a penniless
outlaw with a price on his head, would make one whit of difference to
Dolores.

After all what was it to be outlawed? If he did this service for the
Abbot and Don Carlos--a hard one, surely--he would be received into the
army of Navarra, and he might at once become an officer. Or he might
escape across the seas and make a home for Dolores in a new country.
Meantime he would see her once more, for that night at least hold her
safe in his arms.

But by this time he had gone round the gable by the little narrow path
over which the reeds continually rustled. He passed the window with the
broken _reja_, and he smiled when he thought of the ignominious flight
of Don Rafael down the village street. With a quickened step and his
heart thudding in his ears he went about the little reed-built hut in
which he had kept Concha's firewood, and stood at the back-door.

It was closed and impervious. No ray of light penetrated. "Perhaps
Concha has gone out, and the little one, being afraid, is sitting alone
in the dark, or has drawn the clothes over her head in bed."

He had always loved the delightful terrors with which Dolores was wont
to cling to him, or flee to throw herself on his bosom from some
imaginary peril--a centipede that scuttled out of the shutter-crack or a
he-goat that had stamped his foot at her down on the rocks by the river.
And like a healing balm the thought came to him. For all that talk in
the venta--of Concha this and Concha that, of lovers and aspirants, no
single word had been uttered of his Dolores.

"What a fool, Ramon! What an inconceivable fool!" he murmured to
himself. "_You_ doubted her, but the common village voice, so insolently
free-spoken, never did so for a moment!"

He knocked and called, his old love name for her, "Lola--dear
Lola--open! It is I--Ramon!"

He called softly, for after all he was the outlaw, and the Migueletes
might be waiting for him in case he should return to his first home.

But, call he loud or call he soft, there was no answer from the little
house where he had been so happy with Dolores. He struck a light with
his tinder-box and lit the dark lantern he carried.

There was another bill on the back-door, and now with the lantern in his
hand he read it from top to bottom. It was dated some months previously
and was under the authority of the _alcalde_ of Sarria and by order of
General Nogueras, the Cristino officer commanding the district.

"This house, belonging to the well-known rebel, outlaw and murderer,
Ramon Garcia, called El Sarria, is to be sold for the benefit of the
government of the Queen-Regent with all its contents----" And here
followed a list, among which his heart stood still to recognise the
great chair he had bought at Lerida for Dolores to rest in when she was
delicate, the bed they twain had slept in, the very work-table at which
she had sewn the household linen, and sat gossiping with Concha over
their embroidery.

But there was no doubt about the matter. Dolores was gone, and the eye
of El Sarria fell upon a notice rudely printed with a pen and inserted
in a corner of the little square trap-door by which it was possible to
survey a visitor without opening the door.

     "Any who have letters, packages, or other communications for
     persons lately residing in this house, are honourably requested
     to give themselves the trouble of carrying them to the Mill of
     Sarria, where they will receive the sincere thanks and
     gratitude of the undersigned

     "LUIS FERNANDEZ."

Ramon saw it all. He knew now why his friend had arranged for his death
at the mouth of the secret hiding-place. He understood why there was no
talk about Dolores at the inn. She was under the protection of the most
powerful man in the village, save the alcalde alone. Not that Ramon
doubted little Dolores. He would not make that mistake a second time.

But they would work upon her, he knew well how, tell her that he was
dead, that Luis Fernandez has been his only friend. He recollected, with
a hot feeling of shame and anger, certain speeches of his own in which
he had spoken to her of the traitor as his "twin brother," the "friend
of his heart," and how even on one occasion he had commended Dolores to
the good offices of Luis when he was to be for some weeks absent from
Sarria upon business.

He turned the lamp once more on the little announcement so rudely traced
upon the blue paper. A spider had spun its web across it. Many flies had
left their wings there. So, though undated, Ramon judged that it was by
no means recent.

"Ah, yes, Don Luis," he thought grimly, "here is one who has a message
to leave at the mill-house of Sarria."

But before setting out Ramon Garcia went into the little fagot-house,
and sitting down upon a pile of kindling-wood which he himself had cut,
he drew the charges of his pistols and reloaded them with quite
extraordinary care.

Then he blew out his lantern and stepped forth into the night.

       *       *       *       *       *

At the venta the three adventurers supped by themselves. Their Gallegan
retainer did not put in an appearance, to the sorrow of Mons. Etienne
who wished to employ him in finding out the abiding-place of the
faithless but indubitably charming Dona Concha.

However, the Gallegan did not return all night. He had, in fact, gone to
deliver a message at the house of his sometime friend Don Luis
Fernandez.

When he arrived at the bottom of the valley through which the waters of
the Cerde had almost ceased to flow, being so drained for irrigation and
bled for village fountains that there remained hardly enough of them to
be blued by the washerwomen at their clothes, or for the drink of the
brown goats pattering down to the stray pools, their hard little hoofs
clicking like castanets on the hot and slippery stones of the river-bed.
Meanwhile El Sarria thought several things.

First, that Luis Fernandez had recovered from his wound and was so sure
of his own security that he could afford to take over his friend's wife
and all her responsibilities. Ramon gritted his teeth, as he stole like
a shadow down the dry river-bed. He had learned many a lesson during
these months, and the kite's shadow flitted not more silently over the
un-peopled moor than did El Sarria the outlaw down to the old
mill-house. He knew the place, too, stone by stone, pool by pool, for in
old days Luis and he had often played there from dawn to dark.

The mill-house of Sarria was in particularly sharp contrast to the abode
he had left. Luis had always been a rich man, especially since his
uncle died; he, Ramon, never more than well-to-do. But here were
magazines and granaries, barns and drying-lofts. Besides, in the
pleasant angle where the windows looked down on the river, there was a
dwelling-house with green window-shutters and white curtains, the like
of which for whiteness and greenness were not to be seen even within the
magnificent courtyard of Senor de Flores, the rich alcalde of Sarria.

This was illuminated as Ramon came near, and, from the darkness of the
river gully, he looked up at its lighted windows from behind one of the
great boulders, which are the teeth of the Cerde when the floods come
down from the mountains. How they rolled and growled and groaned and
crunched upon each other! Ramon, in all the turmoil of his thoughts,
remembered one night when to see Dolores and to stand all dripping
beneath her window, he had dared even that peril of great waters.

But all was now clear and bright and still. The stars shone above and in
nearly every window of the mill-house there burned a larger, a mellower
star. It might have been a _festa_ night, save that the windows were
curtained and the lights shone through a white drapery of lace, subdued
and tender.

He crept nearer to the house. He heard a noise of voices within. An
equipage drove up rapidly to the front. What could bring a carriage to
the house of Luis Fernandez?

A wild idea sprang into Ramon's brain. He had been so long in solitude
that he drew conclusions rapidly. So he followed the train of thought
upon which he had fallen, even as the flame runs along a train of
gunpowder laid on the floor.

They had been long persuading her--all these months he had been on the
mountain, and now they had married her to his false friend, to Luis
Fernandez. It was the eve of the wedding-feast, and the guests were
arriving. His knife had deceived him a second time. He had not struck
true. Where was his old skill? There--surely his eyesight did not
deceive him--was Luis Fernandez walking to and fro within his own house,
arm in arm with a friend. They had lied to Dolores and told her he was
dead, even as the Migueletes would certainly do to claim the reward.
There upon the balcony was a stranger dressed in black; he and Luis came
to an open window, leaned out, and talked confidentially together. The
stranger was peeling an orange, and he flung the peel almost upon the
head of El Sarria.

Ramon, fingering his pistol butt, wondered if he should shoot now or
wait. The two men went in again, and solved the difficulty for that
time. Moreover, the outlaw did not yet know for certain that his wife
was within the mill-house.

He would reconnoitre and find out. So he hid his gun carefully in a dry
place under a stone, and stole up to the house through the garden,
finding his way by instinct, for all the lighted windows were now on the
other side.

Yet El Sarria never halted, never stumbled, was never at a loss. Now he
stepped over the little stream which ran in an artificial channel to
reinforce the undershot wheel from above, when the Cerde was low.
Another pace forward and he turned sharply to the left, parted a tangle
of oleanders, and looked out upon the broad space in front of the house.

It was a doctor's carriage all the way from La Bisbal that stood there.
It was not a wedding then; some one was ill, very ill, or the
_Sangrador_ would not have come from so far, nor at such an expense to
Don Luis, who in all things was a careful man. Moreover, to Ramon's
simple Spanish mind the _Sangrador_ and the undertaker arrived in one
coach. Could he have struck some one else instead of Don Luis that night
at the chasm? Surely no!

And then a great keen pain ran through his soul. He heard Dolores call
his name! High, keen, clear--as it were out of an eternity of pain, it
came to him. "_Ramon, Ramon--help me, Ramon!_"

He stood a moment clutching at his breast. The cry was not repeated. But
all the same, there could be no mistake. It was her voice or that of an
angel from heaven. She had summoned him, and alive or dead he would find
her. He drew his knife and with a spring was in the road. Along the wall
he sped towards the door of the dwelling-place: it stood open and the
wide hall stretched before him empty, vague, and dark.

Ramon listened, his upper lip lifted and his white teeth showing a
little. He held his knife, yet clean and razor-sharp in his hand. There
was a babel of confused sounds above; he could distinguish the tones of
Luis Fernandez. But the voice of his Dolores he did not hear again. No
matter, he had heard it once and he would go--yes, into the midst of his
foes. Escape or capture, Carlist or Cristino did not matter now. She was
innocent; she loved him; she had called his name. Neither God nor devil
should stop him now. He was already on the staircase. He went
noiselessly, for he was bare of foot, having stripped in the river-bed,
and left his brown cordovans beside his gun. But before his bare sole
touched the hollow of the second step, the one sound in the universe
which could have stopped him reached his ear--and that foot was never
set down.

_El Sarria heard the first cry of a new-born child._




CHAPTER XIII

DON TOMAS DIGS A GRAVE


No Cristino bullet that ever was moulded could have stopped the man more
completely. He stood again on the floor of the paven hall, pale, shaking
like an aspen leaf, his whole live soul upturned and aghast within him.

And above the youngling blared like a trumpet.

El Sarria was outside now. His knife was hidden in his breast. There was
no need of it, at least for the present. He looked out of the gate upon
the white and dusty highway. Like the hall, it was vague and empty,
ankle-deep too in yet warm dust, that felt grateful to his feet after
the sharp stones of the _arroyo_ out of which he had climbed.

Under the barn a woman crouched by a fire near a little tent pitched in
a corner, evidently taking care of the _tan_ in the absence of her
companions. Gipsies they were, as he could see, and strangers to the
place. Perhaps she could tell him something. She called aloud to him,
and he went and sat down beside her, nothing loth.

"You are a Gallegan, I see!" said the woman, while she continued to stir
something savoury in a pot without appearing to pay Ramon much
attention.

"A Gallician from Lugo--yes--but I have been long in these parts,"
answered El Sarria, mindful of his accent.

"And we of Granada--as you may both see and hear!" said the old gipsy,
tossing her head with the scorn of the Romany for the outlander.

"What is going on up there?" he said, indicating the mill-house with his
thumb. And as he spoke, for the first time the woman ceased stirring the
pot and turned her eyes upon him.

"What is that to thee?" she inquired with a sudden fiery thrill in her
speech.

As fierce and strong beat the passion in the heart of El Sarria, but
nevertheless he commanded himself and answered, "Naught!"

"Thou liest!" she said; "think not to hide a heart secret from a hax, a
witch woman. Either thou lovest to the death or thou hatest to the
death. In either case, _pay_! Pay, and I will tell thee all thy desire,
according to the crossing of my hand!"

El Sarria drew a gold double _duro_ from his pouch and gave it into her
withered clutch.

"Good," she said, "'tis a good crossing! I will tell you truth that you
may take oath upon, whether kissing or slaying be in your thought. A
woman is sick to the death or near by. A babe little desired is born.
The Tia Elvira is with her. Whether the woman live or die, the Tia will
decide according to the crossing of _her_ hand. And the babe--well, when
the mother is soon to be a bride, its life is not like to be long! A
rough crossing for so short a sojourn, I wot. Good morning, brave man's
son! And to you, sir, a safe journey till the knife strikes or the lips
meet!"

The cryptic utterance of the witch woman sitting crooning over her pot
affected El Sarria greatly. He did not doubt for a moment that Dolores
lay within the house of Luis Fernandez, and that he had heard the
crying of his own first-born son. He arose uncertainly, as if the solid
earth were swaying beneath him.

Leaving her pot simmering on the wood-ashes, the gipsy woman came after
Ramon to the corner of the garden. The broad-leaved fig-trees made a
dense green gloom there. The pale grey undersides of the olive whipped
like feathers in the light chill breeze of night.

"There--go in there!"

She pointed with her hand to a little pillared summer-house in the
garden. It was overgrown with creepers, and Luis had placed a fountain
in it, which, however, only played when the waters were high in the
Cerde.

"Whether you hate the old or love the young, bide there," she whispered;
"there is no need that Tia Elvira should have all the gold. Cross my
hand again, and I am your servant for ever."

Ramon gave her a gold _duro_.

"I am not a rich man," he said, "but for your good-will you are
welcome!"

"You run eager-hearted in the dust with bare and bleeding feet," she
said. "You carry a knife naked in your bosom. Therefore you are rich
enough for me. And I will spite Tia Elvira if I can. She would not give
me so much as an _ochavo_ of all her gettings. Why should I consider
her?"

And she gripped Ramon by the arm with claws like eagles' talons and
stood leaning against him, breathing into his ear.

"Ah, Gallego, you are strong to lean against. I love a man so," she
said. "Once you had not stood so slack and careless if La Giralda had
leaned her breast against your shoulder--ah me, all withered now is it
and hard as the rim of a sieve. But you love this young widow, you also.
She is El Sarria's widow, they tell me, he whom the Migueletes slew at
the entering in of the Devil's Canyon. A fine man that, _Caramba_! And so
you too wish to marry her now he is dead. If I were a widow and young I
would choose you, for you are of stature and thickness, yes--a proper
man through and through. Scarce can I meet my old arms about your chest.
Yet woman never knows woman, and she may chance to prefer Don Luis. But
the babe is in their way--the babe that cried to-night. Luis does not
wish it well. He longs for children of his own by this woman, and El
Sarria's brat would spoil his inheritance. The Tia let the secret out in
her cups!"

She stopped and unclasped her arms.

"Ah," she said, "you love not Don Luis. I felt it when I spoke of his
having issue by that woman. I wot well the thing will never happen. Your
knife or your pistol (of these you have two) will have conference with
him before that. But, if you wish this child to live--though I see not
why you should, save that its father was like you a proper man and the
slayer of many--stand yonder in the shadow of the summer-house, and if
any come out with the babe, smite! If it be a man, smite hard, but if it
be Aunt Elvira, the _hax_, smite ten times harder. For she is the devil
in petticoats and hath sworn away many a life, as she would do mine if
she could. I, who have never wished her any harm all the days of my
life! There, put your arm about me yet a moment--so. Now here is your
gold back. I wish it not. The other is better. Tighter! Hold me yet
closer a moment. Ay-ah, dearie, it is sweet to feel once more the grip
of a strong man's arms about one--yes--though he love another--and she
a little puling woman who cannot even deliver herself of her first-born
son without a _Sangrador_. Go--go, they are coming to the door. I see
the lights disappear from the chamber above. Remember to strike the Tia
low--in the groin is best. She wears amulets and charms above, and you
might miss your mark!"

So, much astonished, and with his gold pieces in his hand, Ramon found
him in the little roughly finished lath-and-plaster temple. He sat on
the dry basin of the fountain and parted the vine leaves with his hands.
He was scarce a dozen yards from a door in the wall--a door recently
broken, which by two stone steps gave direct access to the garden.

Behind him were the wall and the fig-tree where he had spoken with the
gipsy. As he looked he fancied a figure still there, dark against the
sky, doubtless the woman La Giralda waiting to see if his knife struck
the Tia in the proper place.

Ramon listened, and through the darkness he could discern the keen,
insistent, yet to his ear sweet crying of the babe, presently broken by
a series of pats on the back into a staccato bleat, and finally stilling
itself little by little into an uncertain silence.

Then the door into the garden was cautiously opened, and a man clumsily
descended. He shut the door softly behind him and stood a while gazing
up at the lighted room. Then shaking his fist at the illuminated panes,
he moved towards the summer-house. El Sarria thought himself discovered,
and with a filling of his lungs which swept his breast up in a grand
curve, he drew his knife and stood erect in the darkest corner.

Stumbling and grumbling the man came to the aperture. He did not descend
the step which led to the interior, but instead groped through one of
the open windows for something behind the door.

"May holy San Isidro strike my brother with his lightnings!" he
muttered. "He gives me all the ill jobs, and when I have done them but
scant thanks for my pains!"

His hand went groping blindly this way and that, unwitting of what
lurked in the further gloom.

"From Ramon Garcia's knife at the Devil's Gorge to this young one's
undoing, all comes to poor Tomas. And now, when he might have left me
the mill-house he must needs marry this widow Garcia and set to work
forthwith to chouse me out of my inheritance! A foul pest on him and on
his seed!"

This mutter of discontent he interspersed with yet more potent
anathemas, as he groped here and there in the darkness for what he
sought. By-and-by he extracted a spade, a mattock, and a skin-covered
corn measure holding about the quarter of an _arroba_.

With these he went grumbling off towards the deep shade of the fig-tree
where Ramon had talked with the gipsy woman. With great impartiality he
cursed his brother Luis, El Sarria and his knife, the widow Dolores and
her child.

Ramon heard him laugh as he stumbled among the vine roots.

"It is a blessing that such puling brats need no iron collar when
sentenced to the garotte. It will not be pleasant, I suppose--a nasty
thing enough to do. But after all, this little trench under the fig-tree
will be an excellent hold over my good brother Luis. Many a stout
'ounce' of gold shall he bleed because of the small squalling bundle
that shall be hushed to sleep under this garden mould!"

Nothing was heard for the next ten minutes but the measured stroke of
the mattock, and the deep breathing of the night workman. But a broad
shadow had drifted silently out from the corner of the little temple
summer-house, and stood only a yard or two from the hole Don Tomas was
making in the ground under the fig-tree.

El Sarria knew his man by this time, though he had not seen him for many
years. The grave-digger was Don Tomas, Luis Fernandez's ne'er-do-well
brother, who had been compelled to flee the country the year of
Angouleme's French invasion, for giving information to the enemy. He it
was whom he had seen at his old tricks by the Devil's Canyon. Not but
what Luis must all the same have set him on, for he alone knew of the
secret way of retreat.

Presently with many puffs and pants Tomas finished the work to his
satisfaction. Then he shook a handful of grass and leaves into the
bottom of the excavation.

"There," he muttered with a cackle of laughter, "there is your
cradle-bed cosily made, young Don Ramon! Would that your father were
lying cheek by jowl with you! Would not I cover you both up snugly. Holy
Coat of Treves, but I am in a lather! This it is to labour for others'
good! I wonder how soon that hell-hog Tia Elvira will be ready to do her
part. The _Sangrador_ must have gone home hours ago. She is to bring the
youngling out and then go back to tell her story to the mother how
sweetly it passed away--ah, ah--how heavenly was its smile. So it will
be--so it will! Tomas Fernandez knows the trick. He has quieted many a
leveret the same way!"

The garden door opened again, this time very slightly, a mere slit of
light lying across the tangled green and yellowish grey of the garden.
It just missed El Sarria and kindled to dusky purple a blossom of
oleander that touched his cheek as he stooped. The whites of his eyes
gleamed a moment, but the digger saw him not. His gaze was fixed on his
brother in the doorway.

"The signal," he muttered, "I am to go and wait outside for the Tia. Of
course, as usual, my good and respectable brother will not put a finger
to the job himself. Well, _toma_! he shall pay the more sweetly when all
is done--oh yes, Luis shall pay for all!"

He was standing leaning upon his mattock at the head of the little grave
which he had destined for the child of Dolores Garcia. He had been
whistling a gay Andalucian lilt of tune he had learned on his long
travels. A devil of a fellow this Tomas in his day, and whistled
marvellously between his teeth--so low that (they said) he could make
love to a Senorita in church by means of it, and yet her own mother at
her elbow never hear.

"Well, better get it over!" he said, dropping his mattock and starting
out towards the door. "Here comes the Tia!"

But at that moment the heavens fell. Upon the head of the midnight
workman descended the flat of his own spade. El Sarria had intended the
edge, but Tomas's good angel turned the weapon at the last moment or
else he had been cloven to the shoulder-blade. For it was a father's arm
that wielded the weapon. Down fell the digger of infant graves, right
athwart the excavation he himself had made. His mouth was filled with
the dirt he had thrown out, and the arm that threw it swung like a
pendulum to and fro in the hole.




CHAPTER XIV

THE HOLY INNOCENTS


With small compunction El Sarria turned Don Tomas over with his foot and
coolly appropriated the cloak he had discarded, as also his headgear,
which was banded with gay colours, and of the shape affected by the
dandies of Seville.

Then swinging the cloak about him, and setting the hat upon his head
jauntily, he strode to the garden door.

Above he could hear the angry voice of a woman, with intervals of
silence as if for a low-toned inaudible reply. Then came a wail of
despair and grief--that nearly sent him up the stairs at a tiger's rush,
which would have scattered his enemies before him like chaff. For it was
the voice of his Dolores he heard for the second time. But of late El
Sarria had learned some of the wisdom of caution. He knew not the force
Luis might have within the house, and he might only lose his own life
without benefiting either Dolores or his son.

Then there was a slow foot on the stairs, coming down. The light went
out above, and he heard a heavy breathing behind the closed door by
which he stood.

"Tomas--Tomas!" said a voice, "here is the brat. It is asleep; do it
quietly, so that the mother may not be alarmed. I cannot stir without
her hearing me and asking the reason."

And in the arms of Ramon Garcia was placed the breathing body of his
first-born son. The door was shut before he could move, so astonished he
was by the curious softness of that light burden, and Tia Elvira's
unamuleted groin escaped safe for that time--which, indeed, afterwards
turned out to be just as well.

So at the door of his enemy El Sarria stood dumb and stricken, the babe
in his arms. For the fact that this child was the son of his little
Dolores, annihilated for the moment even revenge in his soul.

But a hand was laid on his shoulder.

"Haste thee, haste," hissed the witch-wife, La Giralda, Elvira's friend
and rival, "hast thou smitten strongly? She lies behind the door. I
cannot hear her breath, so all must be well. I saw thee stoop to the
blow. Well done, well done! And the brain-pan of the ill-disposed and
factious Senor Tomas is comfortably cracked, too. He had but sevenpence
in his pockets, together with a bad peseta with a hole in it. Such
fellows have no true moral worth. But come away, come away! Presently
Don Luis will miss the Tia and give the alarm. Give me the babe!"

But this Ramon would not do, holding jealously to his own.

"What can you, a man, do with a babe?" she persisted. "Can you stop its
mouth from crying? Is there milk in your breasts to feed its little
blind mouth? Give it to me, I say!"

"Nay," said El Sarria, shaking her off, "not to you. Did not this
murderous woman come from your waggons? Is not her place under your
canvas?"

"It shall be so no more, if your stroke prove true," said the gipsy. "I
shall be the queen and bring up this youngling to be the boldest
horse-thief betwixt this filthy Aragon and the Gipsy-barrio of Granada,
where La Giralda's cave dives deepest into the rock."

"No, I will not!" said the man, grasping the babe so tightly that it
whimpered, and stretched its little body tense as a bowstring over his
arm. "I will take him to the hills and suckle him with goat's milk! He
shall be no horse-thief, but a fighter of men!"

"Ah, then you are an outlaw--a lad of the hills? I thought so," chuckled
the woman. "Come away quickly, then, brave manslayer; I know a better
way than either. The sisters, the good women of the convent, will take
him at a word from me. I know the night watch--a countrywoman of mine,
little Concha. She will receive him through the wicket and guard him
well--being well paid, that is, as doubtless your honour can pay!"

"What, little Concha Cabezos?" said Ramon with instant suspicion. "Was
she not a traitress to her mistress? Was it not through her treachery
that her mistress came hither?"

"Little Concha--a traitress," laughed the old woman. "Nay--nay! you know
her not, evidently. She may, indeed, be almost everything else that a
woman can be, as her enemies say. No cloistered Santa Teresa is our
little Concha, but, for all that, she is of a stock true to her salt,
and only proves fickle to her wooers. Come quickly and speak with her.
She is clever, the little Concha, and her advice is good."

They passed rapidly along the road, deep in white dust, but slaked now
with the dew, and cool underfoot. The babe lifted up his voice and
wept.

"Here, give him me. I cannot run away with him if I would," said the
gipsy. "You may keep your hand on my arm, if only you will but give him
me!"

And the gipsy woman lifted the little puckered features to her cheek,
and crooned and clucked till the child gradually soothed itself to sleep
face-down on her shoulder.

"How came Concha at the house of the nuns?" said Ramon.

"That you must ask herself," answered the woman; "some quarrel it was.
Luis Fernandez never loved her. He wished her out of the house from the
first. But here we are!"

First came a great whitewashed forehead of blind wall, then in the midst
a small circular tower where at one side was a door, heavily guarded
with great iron plates and bolts, and on the other a deep square
aperture in which was an iron turnstile--the House of the Blessed
Innocents at last.

The gipsy woman went directly up to the wicket, and whispered through
the turnstile. There was a dim light within, which presently brightened
as if a lamp had been turned up.

The woman stepped back to El Sarria's side.

"The little Concha is on duty," she whispered. "Go thou up and speak
with her! Nay, take the child if thou art so jealous of him. I would not
have stolen the boy. Had the nationals not killed El Sarria at the
Devil's Gorge, I had said that thou wert the man himself!"

Ramon took the babe awkwardly.

"At any event thou art a brave fighter," she murmured, "and cracked that
evil-doing Tomas's skull for him to a marvel. Thou shalt have all the
help La Giralda can give thee!"

Ramon, with the babe in his arms, put his head within, and spoke to
Concha. A little cry, swiftly checked, came forth from the whitewashed
portress' lodge of the House of the Innocents. Then after five minutes
Ramon kissed the little puckered face of his son, and each of the
dimpled fat red hands he held so tightly clenched, and laid him on the
revolving iron plate of the conventual turnstile. Without a creek the
axle turned, and in a moment more the child was in the arms of Holy
Church, pleasantly represented for the nonce by the very secular charms
of little Concha Cabezos.

Then a word or two were spoken. Concha told the outlaw how, by a letter
purporting to come from himself, forged by Don Luis or his brother,
Dolores had been advised to put herself under the protection of his
beloved friend Don Luis Fernandez "until the happier days." Concha also
told how the miller had found an excuse to send her from the house in
disgrace, and how for her needlework and skill in fine broidery she had
been received at the Convent of the Holy Innocents, how Manuela from the
priest's house and this gipsy wise-woman "Tia Elvira" had watched over
Dolores ever since, not allowing her to hold any communication with the
outside world, and especially with her former waiting-maid.

"Then came the news of your death," she continued, "and after that the
guard upon Dolores was redoubled, and till to-night I have heard
nothing. But the babe shall be safe and unknown here among the sisters.
Yet for the future's sake give me some token that you may claim him by.
All such things are entered in a book as being brought with a child."

El Sarria passed within the turnstile a golden wristlet his mother had
given him at his first communion, when he was the best and most dutiful
boy in all Sarria, and held by the priest to be a pattern communicant.

"Can you not stay yet other twenty-four hours in Sarria?" asked Concha.
"If so, we must try to bring your Dolores where she will be as safe as
the child."

"I would stay a year to preserve from harm a hair of her head--I who
have wronged her!"

"Ah," sighed Concha through the wicket, as if she knew all about
unworthy suspicion on the part of lovers, "men are like that. They are
ready to suspect the most loving and the most innocent, but we women
forgive them!"

Then pouting her pretty red lips the little Concha spoke low in the ear
of El Sarria a while. After five minutes of this whispered colloquy, she
added aloud--

"Then we will proceed. Go, do your part. You may trust La Giralda. Go
quickly. You have much to do."

And little Concha snapped to the shutter of the wicket in his face.

Much to do. Yes, it was true. What with Dolores in the power of his
false friend Luis and the evil hag Tia Elvira, his gentlemen to attend
upon at their inn, and the grave-digger lying with a broken head in the
garden, El Sarria might be said to have had some private business upon
his hands. And this, too, in addition to his affairs of state--the
Abbot's commission, his own outlawry, and the equal certainty of his
being shot whether he fell into the hands of the Carlists or of the
national soldiers.

Yet in spite of all these, never since the evil night of his first
home-coming to Sarria had he been so happy as when he retraced his way
in company with La Giralda in the direction of the mill-house.

And as he went, thinking no thought save of Dolores and his love,
suddenly the only man who would have dared to cross his path stood
before him.

"Ah, sirrah," cried Rollo the Scot, "is this your service? To run the
country with women--and not even to have the sense to choose a pretty
one. What mean you by this negligence, dog of Galicia?"

"I attend to my own affairs," answered Ramon, with a sullen and boding
quiet; "do me the favour to go about yours."

Hot-blood Rollo leaped upon him without a word, taking the older and
stronger man at unawares with his young litheness. He saw Ramon's
fingers moving to the knife in its sheath by his side. But ere they
could reach it, his hand was on the giant's wrist and his pistol at his
ear.

"A finger upon your Albacetan and you die!" cried Rollo. "I would have
you Gallegans learn that the servant is not greater than his lord."

Now Ramon knew that not his life, but that of Rollo, hung on a hair. For
he was conscious that La Giralda's knife was bare and that that
determined lady was simply choosing her opportunity. If Rollo had been
older most likely Ramon would have waited motionless for Giralda's
thrust, and then turned the young man under his heel, precisely as he
had done to the grave-digger earlier in the evening. But as they rode
from the abbey he had admired the young fellow's gallant bearing and
perhaps heard also of his flouting of his own Miguelete enemies at the
inn of San Vicente. So for this time he had pity upon him.

"Stand back, Giralda," he commanded. Then to Rollo he said, "Forgive my
seeming negligence, Senor. It was only seeming. The honour of my wife
and the life of my child are at stake. I am Ramon Garcia the outlaw,
whom you saw fall upon the altar of the Abbey of Montblanch. This is my
home. My wife is here and near to death in the house of mine enemy. Let
these things be my excuse!"

Rollo dropped his pistol, like a good sportsman mechanically uncocking
it as he did so. His generous impulses were as fierce and swift as his
other passions.

"Tell me all," he said, "'fore God I will help you--ay, before any king
or monk on earth. A brave man in such trouble has the first claim of all
upon Rollo Blair!"

"And your companions?" said El Sarria.

"I give myself no trouble about them," cried Rollo. "Senor Mortimer will
visit the vineyards and wine cellars to-morrow and be happy. And as for
gay Master Etienne, has he not the little Concha to search for? Besides,
even if he had not, he would not be six hours in the place without
starting a new love affair."

Then, as they turned backwards along the road, El Sarria told Rollo all
his tale, and the young Scot found himself, for the first time, deep
among the crude mother-stuff of life and passion.

"And I thought that I had lived!" he said, and looked long at the huge
form of the outlaw by his side, to whom deadly peril was as meat and
drink, whom any man might slay, and gain a reward for the deed.

"I see it!" cried Rollo, whose quick brain caught the conditions of the
problem even as Ramon was speaking. "And if I help, my companions will
help also. I answer for them!"

For this young man was in the habit, not only of undertaking remarkable
adventures himself, but, out of mere generosity, of engaging his friends
in them as well. Yet never for a moment did Rollo doubt that he was
acting, not only for the best, but positively in a manner so reasonable
as to be almost humdrum.

So upon this occasion, finding El Sarria in difficulties, he pledged
himself to the hilt to assist that picturesque outlaw. Yet, doubtless,
had he first come across a captain of Migueletes in trouble about
Ramon's capture, he would have taken a hand in bringing about that event
with a truly admirable and engaging impartiality. This was perhaps the
quality which most of all endeared Rollo to his friends.

"Concha--Concha," Rollo was thinking deeply and quickly; "tell me what
kind of girl is this Concha?"

"She is as other girls," said El Sarria, indifferently enough, who had
not till that night troubled his head much about her, "a good enough
girl--a little light-hearted, perhaps, but then--she is an Andaluse, and
what can you expect? Also well-looking----"

"And has been told so as often as I was in my youth!" said the old woman
La Giralda, breaking in. "Of Concha Cabezos this man knows nothing, even
if he be El Sarria risen from the dead (as indeed I suspected from the
first). And if, as he says, she is somewhat light of heart and heel,
the little Concha has a wise head and a heart loyal to all except her
would-be lovers. Being a Sevillana, and with more than a drop of Romany
blood in her veins, she hath never gotten the knack of that

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