doubtless give the whole palace and town over to
rapine and pillage. Themselves desperate with hunger and isolation, they
had resolved to strike a blow which would ring from one end of Spain to
the other.

It was their intention (so the imp said) to kill the Queen-Regent and
her daughter, to slaughter the ministers and courtiers in attendance, to
plunder the palace from top to bottom and to give all within the
neighbouring town of San Ildefonso to the sword.

The programme, as thus baldly announced, was indeed one to strike all
men with horror, even those who had been hardened by years of
fratricidal warfare in which quarter was neither given nor expected.

Besides the plunder of the palace and its occupants, the leaders of the
gipsies expected that they would obtain great rewards from Don Carlos
for thus removing the only obstacles to his undisputed possession of the
throne of Spain.

The heart of Rollo beat violently. His Scottish birth and training gave
him a natural reverence for the sanctity of sickness and death, and the
idea of these men plotting ghoulishly to utilise "the onlaying of the
hand of Providence" (as his father would have phrased it) for the
purposes of plunder and rapine, unspeakably revolted him.

Immediately he called a council of war, at which, in spite of the frowns
of Sergeant Cardono, little Concha Cabezos had her place.

La Giralda was summoned also, but excused herself saying, "It is better
that I should not know what you intend to do. I am, after all, a
black-blooded Gitana, and might be tempted to reveal your secrets if I
knew them. It is better therefore that I should not. Let me keep my own
place as a servitor in your company, to cut the brushwood for your fire
and to bring the water from the spring. In those things you will find me
faithful. Trust the gipsy no further!"

Rollo, remembering her loyalty in the matter of Dolores at the village
of El Sarria, was about to make an objection, but a significant gesture
from the Sergeant restrained him in time.

Whereupon Rollo addressed himself to the others, setting clearly before
them the gravity of the situation.

John Mortimer shook his head gravely. He could not approve.

"How often has my father told me that the first loss is the least! This
all comes of trying to make up my disappointment about the Abbot's
Priorato!"

Etienne shrugged his shoulders and philosophically quoted a Gascon
proverb to the effect that who buys the f