e dark object among the vulture folk.

"_Caramba!_ I have it. It will help me over a difficulty. Brother Luis's
pockets were always well lined. The birds have no need of golden ounces
nor do they carry off silver _duros_. Besides, there is the key of the
strong box hidden in the ravine! Ah, I remember that he carried it about
his neck. These can do no good now to Luis, or indeed, for the matter of
that, to any vulture alive. It were only kind and fraternal to take such
things for a keepsake. I ever loved Luis. He was my favourite brother!"

So saying, Don Tomas descended slowly and painfully to the body--for
indeed he had been roughly used by the mob before they brought him to El
Sarria, that the outlaw might do with him as with his brother. For they
wanted to see the sight.

The vultures slowly and reluctantly withdrew on heavily flapping
pinions.

"Ah," meditated Tomas, as he went placidly about his gruesome business,
"what a fine thing it is to be known for a man quiet and harmless. For
Ramon Garcia said to me with a wave of his hand, 'There is the door! Get
through it hastily and let me see your face no more!' Then to the robber
crew he said, 'Without his brother, senors, this fellow is as a serpent
without the fangs, harmless as a blade of grass among the stones which
the goats nibble as they wag their beards.'"

So after a pause this most respectable man finished his task and went
his way, jingling full pockets and pleasing himself with meditations
upon the abiding usefulness of a good character and of being in all
things blameless, humble, and a man of peace.

* * * * *

There dwells an old peasant now at Montblanch who will act as your guide
for a _real_, and points you out the place before the great altar where
Ramon Garcia, sometime called El Sarria, cast himself down. Then he
shows you where the Abbot stood when he stopped the pursuit of the
outlaw to his own ultimate undoing.

"Yes, Excellency," he says, in a voice like green frogs croaking in the
spring, "true it is as the sermon preached last Easter Day. For these
dim old eyes saw it--also the chamber of the relics I will show you, and
the cloisters with the grave of the Father-Confessor Anselmo.

"And truly the devil's own work I have to keep that same reverend and
undefiled, for Anselmo was a man much hated. Yet as I think unjustly,
being mad and at the last not rightly responsible for his acts. But only
a stout s