windows
were nearly red-hot.

Presently, however, through the breathless noonday he heard heavy
footsteps approaching, accompanied by a most raucous and asthmatical
breathing. The door of the porter's lodge was opened, and he caught
again the heavy rustle of cloth clogging itself about unwontedly hasty
ankles.

"The Mother Superior waits!" gasped the portress, opening the great door
suddenly, and the young man found himself forthwith within the Convent
of the Holy Innocents.

The Lady Superior proved to be a woman of about fifty-five or sixty
years of age, in person stout and rubicund, a smile of good humour
habitually repressed upon her lips, and a mouth slightly pulled down at
the corners, contradicting the first impression of her jovial
countenance.

"You are young, Colonel," she said, frowning upon Rollo's good looks
with a certain affectation of gloom quite foreign to her nature, "very
young to be the messenger of a King!"

"I can, indeed, hardly claim that honour," said Rollo, smiling and
bowing, "but I have the honour to belong to the army of Carlos Quinto,
and to be entrusted with a most serious mission on his behalf. My good
friend Don Baltasar Varela, Prior of the Abbey of Montblanch, a name
probably known to you----"

"He is my cousin germane--my good and honoured friend," said the Lady
Superior.

Rollo bowed.

"He has given me a general introduction to all religious houses where
the name of the true King is held in reverence. You will observe that
the mandate bears the seal of the Propaganda of the Faith and is dated
from Rome itself!"

The Lady Superior looked again at the great and pious names upon Rollo's
commission, and marvelled yet more.

"So young," she said, "so boyish almost--yet so highly honoured! It is
wonderful!"

Then she handed the parchment back to him.

"How can I assist you?" she said. "Command me. There is nothing
consistent with the order and discipline of this house that I will not
grant to you!"

Rollo bowed grandly.

"I thank you in the name of my master," he said; "the King will not
forget fitly to reward his faithful servants. I ask what is indeed
somewhat irregular, but is nevertheless necessary. There is a man of
this place, who for the King's cause has become an outlaw, one Ramon
Garcia----"

The Prioress rose from her seat indignantly.

"He is a murderer--in intent, if not in act," she said. "He is no true
man, but a villain----"

"Many men have been c