her we seek," replied Luis; "she must still be in the
convent."

"Impossible!" said the Mochuelo. "We have rummaged every corner of it."

"She must be there!" cried Herrera. "I will find her."

"We march instantly," said the Mochuelo, laying his hand on Herrera's
bridle. "We have tarried too long."

"Go, then, without me," exclaimed Herrera. And, snatching his rein from
the guerilla's grasp, he spurred his horse up the slope.

"Go with him, Senor Torres," said the Mochuelo. "Every moment is a man's
life. Three minutes more and I march."

Torres rode after his friend.

"And Baltasar?" said the Mochuelo to his lieutenant.

"Lies yonder in the valley," was the reply of Velasquez, as he wiped
his sword on his horse's mane, and returned it to the scabbard. "Wolves'
meat, if they will have him."

The convent, when Herrera and Torres re-entered it, showed abundant
traces of the rough visitors by whom it had recently been occupied.
Doors broken down, windows smashed, the corridors and cloisters
encumbered with broken furniture, and lighted here and there by the
thick wax tapers used at the altar, some of which had fallen from the
places where the guerillas had stuck them, and lay flaming on the
ground, threatening the building with conflagration. Some of the nuns
had shut themselves in their cells, others sat weeping and moping in the
refectory; on all sides were desolation and the sound of lamentation.
Here and there lay the bloody and disfigured bodies of the slain
Carlists. Not one of them had been spared. The chapel had been
ransacked, and although the Mochuelo had forbidden his men to encumber
themselves with plunder, all the smaller and more valuable decorations
of the sacred edifice had been transferred to the haversacks of the
guerillas. He had been more successful in preserving the nuns from ill
usage, although, in moments of license and excitement, even his commands
did not always find obedience. But a few minutes, however, had been
granted to the reckless invaders to complete their work of spoliation,
before he cleared the convent, and, forming up his men outside the gate,
forbade their leaving their ranks. On Herrera's entrance, the terrified
nuns thought that the guerillas were returning, and with cries of terror
fled in all directions. He succeeded in calming their fears, and
enquired for the abbess, although nearly certain that she it was to
whose death he had been witness. None could tell him aught con