d 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 reve