arms night
and morning."

At this moment the colloquy at the abbey gate was broken up by a
somewhat stout man, also in the garb of a novice, a long friar's robe
being girt uncomfortably tight about his waist. In his hand he held a
lantern.

"Monsieur--Brother Hilario, I mean--a thousand devils run away with me
that ever I should speak such a shake-stick name to my master--the Holy
Prior wishes to speak with you, and desires to know whether you would
prefer a capon of Zaragoza or two Bordeaux pigeons in your _olla_
to-night?"

"Come, that is more promising," cried the Scot; "we will gladly accept
of your invitation to dine with you and your uncle, and give him all the
chance he wants to convert me to the religious life. We accept with
pleasure--pleased, I am sure, to meet either the Saragossan capon or the
two Bordeaux pigeons!"

"Invitation!" cried the astonished Brother Hilario. "Did I invite you?
If so, I fear I took a liberty. I do not remember the circumstance."

"Do you doubt my word!" cried the Scot, with instant frowning
truculence. "I say the invitation was implied if not expressed, and by
the eyes of Peggy Ramsay, if you do not get us a couple of covers at
your uncle's table to-night, I will go straight to the Holy Prior and
tell him all that I know of little Concha of Sarria, and your plot to
carry her off--a deal more, I opine, than you included in your last
confession, most high-minded friar!"

"That was before my renunciation of the flesh," cried Saint Pierre,
manifestly agitated.

The Scot felt his elbow touched.

"I was under her balcony with a letter last Friday, no further gone,
sir," whispered the novice in the cord-begirt robe; "blessed angels help
me to get this nonsense out of his head, or it will be the death of us,
and we will never night-hawk it on the Palais Royal again!"

"And on what pious principles do you explain the love-letter you sent
last Friday!" said Rollo, aloud. "What if I were to put it into the
hands of your good uncle the Prior? If that were to happen, I warrant
you would never ride on one of the white abbey mules in the garb of the
brothers of Montblanch!"

The stout novice rubbed his hands behind his master's back, and grinned
from ear to ear. But the effect upon Saint Pierre was not quite what
Rollo intended.

Instead of being astonished and quailing at his acuteness, the young
Frenchman suddenly fired up in the most carnal and unmonkish fashion.

"You have be