ish exaltation. But Rollo Blair was
not a man to be jested with, either by devil or devil's imp. He drew a
pistol from his belt, looked carefully to the priming, and with the
greatest coolness in the world pointed it at the misshapen brat.

"Now listen," he said, "you are old enough to know the meaning of words;
I give you one minute to betake yourself to your own place and leave us
alone! There is no contagion in a pistol bullet, my fine lad, but it is
quite as deadly as any plague. So be off before a charge of powder
catches you up!"

The sound of the angry voices had attracted La Giralda, who, looking up
hastily from her task of building the fire beneath the gipsy tripod at
which she and the Sergeant were cooking, advanced hastily with a long
wand in her hand.

The imp wheeled about as on a pivot, and positively appeared to shrink
into his clothing at the sight of her. He stood motionless, however,
while La Giralda advanced threateningly towards him with the wand in her
hand as if for the purpose of castigation. As she approached he emitted
a cry of purely animal terror, and hastily whipping his crutch under his
arm, betook himself, in a series of long hops, to a spot twenty yards
higher up the bank. But La Giralda stopped him by a word or two spoken
in an unknown tongue, harsh-sounding as Catalan, but curt and brief as a
military order.

The boy stood still and answered in the same speech, at first gruffly
and unwillingly, with downcast looks and his bare great toe scrabbling
in the dust of the hillside.

The dialogue lasted for some time, till at last with a scornful gesture
La Giralda released him, pointing to the upper edge of the _barranco_ as
the place by which he was to disappear: the which he was now as eager to
do, as he had formerly been insolently determined to remain.

During this interview Rollo had stood absent-mindedly with his hand
pressed on Concha's, as he listened to the strange speech of La Giralda.
Even his acquaintance with the language of the gipsies of Granada had
only enabled him to understand a word here and there. The girl's colour
slowly returned, but the fear of the plague still ran like ice in her
veins. She who feared nothing else on earth, was shaken as with a palsy
by the terror of the Black Death, so paralysing was the fear that the
very name of cholera laid upon insanitary Spain.

"Well?" said Rollo, turning to La Giralda, who stood considering with
her eyes upon the ground,