last leaf of tobacco. Now it was rolled accurately and with lingering
particularity, because it was to be the last. It lay in his palm featly
made, a cigarette worthy to be smoked by Don Carlos himself.

Almost unconsciously Rollo put it to his lips. It was a cold morning,
and it is small wonder that his hand shook a little. He was just
twenty-three, and his main regret was that he had not kissed little
Concha Cabezos--with her will, or against it--all would have been one
now. Meantime he looked about him for a light. The general noticed his
hesitation, rose from the table, and with a low bow offered his own, as
one gentleman to another. Rollo thanked him. The two men approached as
if to embrace. Each drew a puff of his cigarette, till the points glowed
red. Rollo, retreating a little, swept a proud acknowledgment of thanks
with his _sombrero_. Cabrera bowed with his hand on his heart. The young
Scot clicked his heels together as if on parade, and strode out with
head erect and squared shoulders in the rear of his companions.

"By God's bread, a man!" said Cabrera, as he resumed his writing, "'tis
a thousand pities I must shoot him!"

They stood all four of them in the garden of the mill-house, underneath
the fig trees in whose shade El Sarria had once hidden himself to watch
the midnight operations of Don Tomas.

The sun was just rising. His beams red, low, and level shot across the
mill-wheel, turning the water of the unused overshot into a myriad
pearls and diamonds as it splashed through a side culvert into the
gorge beneath, in which the gloom of night lingered.

The four men still stood in order. Mortimer and Etienne in the middle,
with slim Rollo and the giant Ramon towering on either flank.

"_Load with ball--at six paces--make ready!_"

The officer's commands rang out with a certain haste, for he could
already hear the clattering of the horses of the general's cavalcade,
and he knew that if upon his arrival he had not carried out his orders,
he might expect a severe reprimand.

But it was not the general's suite that rode so furiously. The sound
came from a contrary direction. Two horses were being ridden at speed,
and at sight of the four men set in order against the wall the foremost
rider sank both spurs into her white mare and dashed forward with a wild
cry.

The officer already had his sword raised in the air, the falling of
which was to be the signal for the volley of death. But it did not fall.