en Rollo delivered to the Abbot (who handed them forthwith to his
reverend conscience-keeper) all his commissions and letters of
recommendation. With a drooping head and a tear in his eye, he gave them
up. For though he had enlisted in the Carlist cause purely as a
mercenary, he had yet meant to carry out his undertakings to the letter.

When at last Rollo looked up, he found the grey eyes of the Abbot
regarding him with a quiet persistence of scrutiny which perturbed him
slightly.

"Have you anything more to tell me?" inquired the ecclesiastic, laying
his hand affectionately on Rollo's shoulder, "you have done all that was
possible for you. No man could have done more. May a continual peace
abide in your heart, my son!"

"My Father," said Rollo, laying a strong constraint upon himself, "I
have indeed a thing to tell that is hard and painful. The monasteries
throughout all Spain are to be suppressed on the twentieth day of this
month by order of the Madrid Government."

As the words passed his lips, the bland expression on Don Baltasar's
face changed into one of fierce hatred and excitement. There was forced
from his lips that sharp hiss of indrawn breath which a man
instinctively makes as he winces under the surgeon's knife.

Then almost instantly he recovered himself.

"Well," he said, "we cannot save the Abbey, we cannot save the Holy
Church from this desecration. I have cried 'Pater mi, si possibile est,
transeat a me calix iste!' But now I say 'Verumtamen non sicut ego volo,
sed sicut tu!'"

Then with a curious change of countenance (the difference between a
priest's expression at the altar and in the sacristy when things have
gone crossly) he turned to Rollo.

"Nevertheless," he said, "I do not deny that to you we owe all thanks
and gratitude. Perhaps some day you shall be repaid!"

When Rollo looked round the saturnine priest had disappeared. His host
and he were alone. The Abbot poured out the coffee.

"You will take some of our famous _liqueur_," he said, calmly and
graciously as ever. "The receipt has been in the possession of the Abbey
for well-nigh a thousand years."

It seemed a pity that so many things which had lasted a thousand years
should come to an end on the twentieth day of the month. Meantime,
however, he imitated the nonchalance of the Abbot. The _liqueur_ was not
to be despised.

Rollo held out his glass scarcely knowing what he did. The Abbot poured
into it a generous portion of t