dignation, based on
considerations of time, place, and personality.

But the young Scot gave her no opportunity. In a moment he had again
become her superior officer.

"Take your piece," he said, with an air of assured command, "together
with sufficient ammunition, and post yourself at the little staircase
window over the great door looking towards the town. If you see any one
approaching, do not hesitate to fire. Good-bye. God bless you! I will
see you again on my rounds!"

And Rollo passed on his way.

Then with a curious constraint upon her tongue, and on her spirit a new
and delightful feeling that she could do no other than as she was
bidden, Concha found herself, with loaded musket and pistol, obediently
taking her place in the general defence of the palace.

CHAPTER XXXII

LIKE A FALLING STAR

Rollo judged aright. It was indeed no time for love-making, and, to do
the young man justice, he did not connect any idea so concrete with the
impulsive kiss he had given to Concha.

She it was who had saved his life at Sarria. She was perilling her own
in order to accompany and assist his expedition. She had drawn up the
ladder he had foolishly forgotten. Yet, in spite of the fact that he was
a young man and by no means averse from love, Rollo was so clean-minded
and so little given to think himself desirable in the eyes of women,
that it never struck him that the presence of La Giralda and Concha
might be interpreted upon other and more personal principles than he had
modestly represented to himself.

True, Rollo was vain as a peacock--but not of his love-conquests.
Punctilious as any Spaniard upon the smallest point of honour, in a
quarrel he was as ready as a Parisian _maitre d'armes_ to pull out sword
or pistol. Nevertheless when a man boasted in his presence of the
favours of a woman, he thought him a fool and a braggart--and was in
general nowise backward in telling him so.

Thus it happened that, though Concha had received no honester or better
intentioned kiss in her life, the giver of it went about his military
duties with a sense of having said his prayers, or generally, having
performed some action raising himself in his own estimation.

"God bless her," he said to himself, "I will be a better man for her
sweet sake. And, by heavens, if I had had such a sister, I might have
been a better fellow long ere this! God bless her, I say!"

But what wonder is it that little Concha, in her passiona