r compelled to flee for
their lives.

Some such panic as this had stampeded the troops stationed in and about
the little town of San Ildefonso, when the first cases of cholera proved
fatal little more than a week before. A part of these had rushed away to
plunder the rich monastery of El Parral a few miles off, lying in the
hollow beneath Segovia. Others, breaking up into parties of from a dozen
to a hundred, had betaken themselves over the mountains in the direction
of Madrid.

So the Queen-Regent and the handsome Senor Munoz remained perforce at La
Granja, for the two-fold reason that the palace of Madrid was reported
to be in the hands of a rebellious mob, and that the disbanding troops
had removed with them every sort and kind of conveyance, robbed the
stables of the horses, and plundered the military armoury of every
useful weapon.

They had not, however, meddled with the treasures of the palace, nor
offered any indignity to the Queen-Regent, or to any of the inmates of
La Granja. But as the Sergeant well knew, not thus would these be
treated by the roving bands of gipsies, who in a few hours would be
storming about the defenceless walls. No resource of oriental torture,
no refinement of barbarity would be omitted to compel the Queen and her
consort to give up the treasures without which it was well known that
they never travelled. Obviously, therefore, there was no time to be
lost.

They went swiftly round the angle of the palace, their feet making no
sound on the clean delicious sward of those lawns which make the place
such a marvel in the midst of tawny, dusty, burnt-up Spain. In a brief
space the party arrived unnoted and unchecked under the wall of the
northern part.

Lights still burnt in two or three windows on the second floor, though
all was dark on the face which the palace turned towards the south and
the town of San Ildefonso.

"These are the windows of the rooms occupied by my lady the
Queen-Regent," whispered the portress, Rebeca, pointing upwards; "but
promise me to commit no murder or do any hurt to the little maid."

"Be quiet, woman," muttered Rollo, more roughly than was his wont; "we
are come to save both of them from worse than death. Sergeant Cardono,
bring the ladder!"

The Sergeant disappeared, and it was not many seconds before he was back
again adjusting its hooks to the side of an iron balcony in front of one
of the lighted rooms. Almost before he had finished Rollo would have