s 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 cruc