Concha of Sarria and I to make a hole in your skin for the
sweet sake of little Peggy Ramsay, who broke my heart or ever I left the
bonny woods o' Alyth to wander on this foreign shore!"

"Your claim I allow, my dear Sir Blair," cried the Frenchman, "but the
eternal concerns of the soul come first, and I have been
wicked--wicked--so very wicked--or at least as wicked as my health
(which is indifferent) would allow. But the holy Prior--the abbot--mine
uncle, hath shown me the error of my ways!"

John Mortimer turned directly round till he faced the speaker.

"Odds bobs," he cried, "then after all there is a pair of them. _He is
this fellow's uncle too!_"

The Frenchman gazed at him amazed for a moment. Then he clapped his hand
fiercely on the place where his sword-hilt should have been, crying, "I
would have you know, Monsieur, that the word of a Saint Pierre is
sacred. I carry in my veins the blood of kings!"

And he grappled fiercely for the missing sword-hilt, but his fingers
encountering only the great jewelled cross of gold filigree work, he
raised it to his lips with a sudden revulsion of feeling.

"Torrentes iniquitatis conturbaverunt me.
Dolores inferni circumdederunt me."

He spoke these words solemnly, shaking his head as he did so.

"What! still harping on little Dolores?" cried Blair; "I thought little
Concha was your last--before Holy Church, I mean."

The little Frenchman was beneath the lamps and he looked up at the long
lean Scot with a peculiarly sweet smile.

"Ah, you scoff," he said, "but you will learn--yes, you will learn. My
uncle, the Prior, will teach you. He will show you the Way, as he has
done for me!"

"It may be so," retorted the Scot, darkly; "I only wish I could have a
chance at him. I think I could prove him all in the wrong about
transubstantiation--that is, if I could keep my temper sufficiently
long.

"But," he added, "if it be a fair question to put to a novice and a holy
man, how about the divine right of kings that you talked so much of only
a week ago, and especially what of Don Carlos, for whom you came to
fight?"

"Ah, my good cousin Carlos, my dear cousin," cried Etienne Saint Pierre,
waving his hands in the air vehemently, "his cause is as dear and sacred
to this heart as ever. But now I will use in his behalf the sword of the
Spirit instead of the carnal weapon I had meant to draw, in the cause of
the Lord's anointed. I will _pray_ for the success of his