thin, 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 st