n 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 wi