enturers than it did to that of which Master
Rollo Blair of Blair Castle in the shire of Fife was the leader. In the
morning they had all risen with the expectation of being shot with the
sun-rising. At ten of the clock they were speeding southward on good
horses, holding acknowledged rank and position in the army of the only
Catholic and religious sovereign.

But they were a philosophic quartette. Rollo drew in the morning air and
blew it back again through his nostrils without thinking much of how
nearly he had come to kissing the brown earth of Luis Fernandez's garden
with a dozen bullets through his heart. Mortimer meditated somewhat
sulkily upon his lost onions, rustling pleasantly back there in the cool
_patio_ of the nunnery. Etienne sorrowed for his latest love idyll
ruthlessly cut short, and as to El Sarria, he thought of nothing save
that Dolores had come back to him and that he had yet to reckon with the
Fernandez family. The next time he would attend to the whole matter
himself, and there would be no mistakes.

It was not without sadness that Rollo looked his last on the white
walls of the convent of the Holy Innocents. He was glad indeed to have
placed Dolores in safety--glad that she and her child were together, and
that the good sisters were responsible for them. Between them the four
had made up a purse to be sent by Concha to the Mother Superior, to be
applied for the behoof of her guests till the better days should come,
and Ramon Garcia be able to claim his wife and first-born son.

But Concha had refused point-blank.

"The babe came through the wicket. The mother arrived by night, a
fugitive asking pity, like the Virgin fleeing down to Egypt in the
pictures," said Concha. "The convent needs no alms, nor does the Lady
Superior sell her help. Keep the money, lads. If I am not a fool you
will need it more than the sisterhood of the Holy Innocents before you
come to your journey's end."

And with that she blew them each a dainty kiss, distinguishing no one
above the other, dropped a curtsey to the general, whose eyes followed
her with more than usual interest, leaped on her white mare and rode
off, attended by La Giralda riding astride like a man, in the same
fashion in which she had arrived.

So little Concha was gone from his sight, and duty loomed up suddenly
gaunt and void of interest before Rollo. To risk his life was nothing.
When he got nearer to the goal, his blood would rise, that he knew.