“This is no time for quibbling over technicalities. Would you see a woman, your friend’s daughter, insulted, perhaps murdered, when a few words from your lips would save her?”
“I would do my duty,” replies the priest, calmly. “The idea is madness. I cannot bring the senorita here, and you cannot reach the church.”
“Oh, I’ll be there in season,” is the cool response. “Just leave the way from your house to the church open to me.”
“If you have any message to send the senorita, you must make haste,” adjures the priest. “The carcelero is approaching.”
“It will be brief,” replies Ashley. Then hurriedly: “Go to her at once. Comfort her. Pray with her. And tell her that I will be with her before the sun rises. Say nothing about the marriage. I prefer to do my own proposing. But, above all, remain with her until I come.”
Then, in a different tone, as the cell door is swung open by the carcelero: “Many thanks, dear father, for your kindly visit and spiritual solace. I have made my peace with heaven, and to-morrow I will show these Spanish gentry how an American can die—when he gets ready,” he adds, under his breath, as the iron door clangs to and he is once more alone.
CHAPTER L.
AT BAY IN THE CHURCH OF SAN PEDRO.
As the echo of Father Hilario’s footsteps dies away adown the gloomy corridor Ashley glances at his watch. It lacks a quarter of two o’clock.
“The trick must be done within two hours, or all is lost,” he mutters. Then he extinguishes the light and throws himself down upon the pallet of straw.