ay yet other twenty-four hours in Sarria?" asked Concha.
"If so, we must try to bring your Dolores where she will be as safe as
the child."

"I would stay a year to preserve from harm a hair of her head--I who
have wronged her!"

"Ah," sighed Concha through the wicket, as if she knew all about
unworthy suspicion on the part of lovers, "men are like that. They are
ready to suspect the most loving and the most innocent, but we women
forgive them!"

Then pouting her pretty red lips the little Concha spoke low in the ear
of El Sarria a while. After five minutes of this whispered colloquy, she
added aloud--

"Then we will proceed. Go, do your part. You may trust La Giralda. Go
quickly. You have much to do."

And little Concha snapped to the shutter of the wicket in his face.

Much to do. Yes, it was true. What with Dolores in the power of his
false friend Luis and the evil hag Tia Elvira, his gentlemen to attend
upon at their inn, and the grave-digger lying with a broken head in the
garden, El Sarria might be said to have had some private business upon
his hands. And this, too, in addition to his affairs of state--the
Abbot's commission, his own outlawry, and the equal certainty of his
being shot whether he fell into the hands of the Carlists or of the
national soldiers.

Yet in spite of all these, never since the evil night of his first
home-coming to Sarria had he been so happy as when he retraced his way
in company with La Giralda in the direction of the mill-house.

And as he went, thinking no thought save of Dolores and his love,
suddenly the only man who would have dared to cross his path stood
before him.

"Ah, sirrah," cried Rollo the Scot, "is this your service? To run the
country with women--and not even to have the sense to choose a pretty
one. What mean you by this negligence, dog of Galicia?"

"I attend to my own affairs," answered Ramon, with a sullen and boding
quiet; "do me the favour to go about yours."

Hot-blood Rollo leaped upon him without a word, taking the older and
stronger man at unawares with his young litheness. He saw Ramon's
fingers moving to the knife in its sheath by his side. But ere they
could reach it, his hand was on the giant's wrist and his pistol at his
ear.

"A finger upon your Albacetan and you die!" cried Rollo. "I would have
you Gallegans learn that the servant is not greater than his lord."

Now Ramon knew that not his life, but that of Rollo, hung on a hair. For
h