"The devil," said young Crowberry.
"Yes. The devil!" cried Antonio, turning upon him with a terrible look.
But the promise of Terce was suddenly fulfilled: Dominus custodit te ab omni malo. Without the smallest anti-devilish volition on Antonio's part, without one Retro me, Satana, without one syllable of prayer, without one crossing of his breast, the tempter vanished back like a spent flash of lightning into the dark. Nor did he flee leaving behind him a void. It seemed that in his unholy footprints stood a strong angel of consolation. Antonio's faith returned with three-fold force. Once more he knew that God would do His part, and that these new happenings were parts of His design. Perhaps He was about to draw Antonio and José along mysterious ways. Perhaps it was His will that they must press with torn raiment and bleeding feet through many a thorn-brake and over leagues of sharp-edged, burning stones. But it was to victory and triumph, not to defeat and shame that the path ran.
When the monk, with inarticulate apologies, resumed his place at the table, the terrible look in his eyes had given place to radiant happiness.
"That's right," said young Crowberry. "I was getting frightened. I was beginning to remember a story I read years and years and years ago, when I was only a young fellow, like yourself. It was something about a man falling down dead, because somebody had broken good news to him too suddenly."
II
Before young Crowberry set out on his return to Coimbra, he deigned to say a little more about his movements and his party. It appeared that he could speak Portuguese fairly well, and that he had traveled all the way from Oporto to the abbey in an English-built dogcart drawn by an English-bred horse. After depositing his heavier luggage in a bedroom at the guest-house and spending one night there, he had left the dogcart in the stables, and was returning on horseback, with nothing but saddle-bags, a heavy-handled whip, and a pistol.
The monk asked twice for some account of Sir Percy Kaye-Templeman. His first application drew forth the answer that there were many better fellows; his second that there were many worse. Concerning Sir Percy's daughter, young Crowberry was voluble: but very little information could be extracted from his discourse, which was almost entirely to the effect that young Crowberry would give his hat (or, at successive repetitions, his ears, or his horse, or tuppence, or the whole world, or his boots, or his soul, or his dinner, or a million pounds) to know what Senhor da Rocha thought of her.
It was of Mrs. Baxter that the young man spoke with most clearness. He persisted in never naming her without the prefix "That Excellent Creature."