ting more than half the fleeing gipsies.
Some, however, evaded her, and she would stay her headlong course a
moment to send a fierce curse after them.

"She is crazed!" thought Rollo; "her wrongs have driven her mad!"

But the sight of that glimmering array of plague-stricken sentinels
waiting for them still and silent in the red dawn, was more than the
fortitude of the rallied forces could stand. Upon approaching the
Hermitage the gipsies again showed symptoms of renewed flight.

Whereupon the girl, shrilly screaming the vilest names at them and in
especial designating Ezquerra as the craven-hearted spawn of an obscene
canine ancestry, mounted the steps herself with the utmost boldness and
confidence.

"I will teach you," she screamed; "I, a girl and alone, will show you
what sacks of straw ye are frighted of. Do ye not know that the great
prize is here, within this very house, behind these defenceless windows
and cardboard doors? The Queen of Spain, whose ransom is worth twice ten
thousand _duros_, even if your coward hearts dared not shed her black
Bourbon blood. Behold!"

It was only by craning far out over the parapet (so far indeed that he
might easily have been discovered from below had there been any to look)
that Rollo was able to see what followed. But every eye was fixed on the
girl. No one among all that company had even a glance to waste upon the
skyline of the Ermita de San Ildefonso.

This was the thing Rollo saw as he looked.

The girl spurned the fallen face-cloth with her bare foot, and catching
the body of the dead man in her arms, she dragged it out of its niche
and cast it down the steps upon which it lay all abroad, half revealed
and hideous in the morning light. This done, rushing back as swiftly and
with the same volcanic energy to the occupant of the other niche, she
hurled him by main force after his companion. Then, panting and wan,
with her single tattered garment half rent from her flat ill-nourished
body, she lifted one arm aloft in triumph and cried, "There, you dogs,
that is what you were afraid of!"

But even as she stood thus revealed in the morning light, a low murmur
of terror and astonishment ran round all who saw her. For in the
struggle the girl had uncovered her shoulder and breast, and there, upon
her young and girlish skin, appeared the dread irregular blotches which
betrayed the worst and most deadly form of the disease.

"The Black Plague! The Black Plague!" shrieked