knowing, from the shouts and yells of pain and fury beneath, that not
only were his folk on the alert, but that he had reason to be satisfied
with the excellence of their marksmanship.

More than one rambling party of gipsies passed their hiding-place. But
these for the most part searched in a perfunctory manner, their heads
over their shoulders to listen to the progress of their comrades who
were attacking the palace, and perhaps also no little afraid lest death
should again leap out upon them from the darkness of the cane-brake.
Rollo, immediately upon his return to the thicket, had recovered and
recharged his pistols by touch, and presently, having made all ready, he
caught up the little girl in his arms, urging her to be silent whatever
happened, and to trust everything to him.

Isabel, who was of an affectionate and easy disposition, though ever
quick to anger, put her arm readily about the young man's neck. He had a
winsome and gracious manner with all children, which perhaps was the
same quality that won him his way with women.

Rollo had an idea which had come to him with the chime of the Hermitage
bell as it tolled the hour of midnight. There, if anywhere, he would
find good men, interested in the welfare of the Princess, and with
hearts large enough to remain calmly at the post of duty even in a
deserted and plague-ruined town. For one of the chief glories of the
Roman Church is this, that her clergy do not desert their people in the
hour of any danger, however terrible. Nothing else, indeed, is thought
of. As a military man would say, "It is the tradition of the service!"

Now if Rollo had been in his own Scottish land during the visitation of
this first cholera, he would have had good grounds for _hoping_ that he
would find the ministers of his faith in the thick of the fight with
death, undismayed, never weary. There were many, very many such--many,
but very far from all. The difference was that here in ignorant Spain
Rollo knew without deduction that of a certainty the monks and parish
priests of the ancient creed would be faithful.

It might indeed in some cases be otherwise with some selfish and
pampered Jesuits or the benefice-seeking rabble of clerics who hang
about the purlieus of a court. A father-confessor or two might flee
over-seas, an abbot go on timely pilgrimage to Rome, but here in San
Ildefonso, Rollo knew that he would either find the priests and holy
brothers of the Church manfully do