o will care for all, till the better days come--a servant and
favourite of Don Raphael. This inquisitioning and denouncing cannot last
for ever--any more than Raphael our landlord or Philip our king."

"Ah," said his mother, "but both of them are like to last beyond my
time. And the fair white house to which your father brought me, a bride!
And the sea--on which, being weary, I have so often looked out and been
refreshed--the cattle and the vines and the goats I tended--am I to see
them no more?"

"Mother," said the Professor, taking her hand and drawing it away from
her face, "here are we your three sons. We can neither stay nor leave
you. They of the Inquisition would revenge on you all that we have
cheated them of--taken out of their hands."

"They are welcome to my old bones," said the Senora, with a gesture of
discouragement.

"No," interrupted Don Jordy, "listen, mother. You are none so ill off.
Here are we, three sons, hale, willing, and unwed, all ready to stand by
you, and to work for you--with our hands if need be. Are there many
mothers who can say as much?"

"Besides," added the Alcalde-Miller, "after all, it is not so far to the
frontier, and, in case of need, I have charged certain good lads I know
of--accustomed to circumvent the King's revenue--to make a clean house
of La Masane. So if aught goes awry--well, I do not promise, but it is
possible that the cattle, and your household gods, mother, with Don
Jordy's books and the Professor's green gown, may find themselves at
Narbonne ere many weeks are over!"

"And for yourself?" said Don Jordy, "your mills, your property?"

The miller laughed and patted his two brothers on the back.

"The good God, who made all, perhaps did not give me so clever a
head-piece as He gave you two. But He taught me, at least, to send every
gold 'Henry' over the frontier as soon as I had another to clink against
it. For the rest, ever as I ground the corn, I took my pay. The mills
and the machinery down there are not mine. I am worth no more this side
of the frontier than the clothes I stand up in. My ancient friend
Pereira, the Israelite of Bayonne, has the rest."

So that is the reason why, when the three familiars of the Holy Office
appeared hot on the trail, they found at La Masane nothing more human
than Don Jordy's white mule, that knew no better than to resist friendly
hands, break a head-stall, and set off after her master, to her own
present undoing.

But wha