h was of regal, nay almost of imperial
dignity. Though no emperor (as at Yuste) had here laid aside the world
and assumed the cowl, yet mighty Kings of Aragon and Navarra lay buried
within its walls, and its long line of mitred abbots included many in
whose veins ran the royal blood of all the Spains.

Almost completely encircled by wild sierras, it was yet situated upon a
plain, as it were let into the very heart of the mountains. A clear
trout stream, which furnished many a Friday's breakfast to the monks,
ran through a rich vale. Of no place within fifty leagues, could it be
so truly said, that all about it and above it there was heard a sound of
many waters.

Of the various potencies and pre-eminences of Montblanch, civil and
ecclesiastical, there was no end. A hundred villages owned its lordship.
The men were serfs, the women handmaids. Soul and body they were bound
to their masters of the monastery of Montblanch. Without permission they
dared neither to wed nor to bury, neither to increase nor to multiply,
to lay the bride on the bride-bed nor the corpse upon the bier.

Nor, to thrill the listener's blood, were darker tales awanting,
whispered with a quiver of the flesh, as men crouched closer about the
glowing charcoal pan, and women glanced fearfully out between the green
lattice strips at the twinkling lights of the Abbey, set high above them
under the silent stars.

It was said, not openly indeed, but rather with an awestruck lowering of
the voice and fearful glances to right and left, that when the
inquisition was done away with in the Spain of the cities and provinces,
the chiefs of the Holy Office had found a last place of refuge beneath
the grey rocks of Montblanch, and that whoso offended against the monks
of the mountain, or refused to them flock or herd, son or daughter,
sooner or later entered the doors of the monastery never to be visible
again in the light of day.

So at least ran the tale, and as the two young men made their way upward
from San Vicencio, by the mountain path beside which the stream brattled
and sulked alternate, Rollo Blair told these things to the Englishman as
one who half believed them.

"It is not possible," answered the latter scornfully; "this is no
century in which such things can be done. Has civilisation not reached
as far as Aragon? Who talks of the rack and the inquisition at this time
of day?"

The young Scot halted a sturdy peasant who came whistling down the pa