f her
countenance relaxed into a strange far-away smile.

Concha spread the kerchief tenderly over the face of the girl, dropping
tears the while. And she crossed the little hands which pain and madness
had driven to deeds of darkness and blood, upon the breast in which the
angry young heart had beaten so hotly, and scattered the white roses
over all.

Then while the Basque Teodoro did his office over his dead brother,
Concha kneeled at the foot of the trench, a little crucifix in her hand.
Her lips moved as she held the rude image of the Crucified over that
fierce little head and sorely tortured body. He who had cast out so many
devils, would surely pardon and understand. So at least she thought.
Rollo watched her, and though brought up to be a good Presbyterian by
his father, he knew that this little foolish Concha must yet teach him
how to pray.

"God may hear her before the other, who knows!" he murmured. "One is a
man praying for men--she, a maiden praying for a maid!"

Then Rollo made the girl, whom the scene had somewhat overwrought, go
off to a secluded part of the garden and wash in the clean cool water of
a fountain, while he remained to shovel in the soil and pack it well
down upon the bodies of the dead who had served his purpose so
faithfully. Last of all he unyoked and fed the oxen, leaving them
solemnly munching their fodder, blinking their meek eyes and ruminating
upon the eternal sameness of things in their serene bovine world. He
came out, stripped himself to the skin, and washed in one of the
deserted kitchens from which Brother Domingo, sometime almoner and cook
to the Ermita of San Ildefonso, had for ever departed.

This being completed to his satisfaction, he went out to find Concha,
who, her face radiant with the water of the Guadarrama (and other things
which the young morning had brought her), met him as he came to her
through the wood.

She held up her face to be kissed as simply and naturally as a child.
Death was all about them, but of a truth these two lived. Yea, and
though they should die ere nightfall, still throughout the eternities
they might comfort themselves, in whatsoever glades of whatsoever
afterworlds they might wander, that on earth they had lived, and not in
vain.

For if it be true that God is Love, equally true is it that love is
life. And this is the secret of all things new and old, of Adam and Eva
his wife, of Alpha and Omega, of the mystic OM, of the joined serpe